I baked flat cookies for 12 years because I was chilling my dough wrong

Thea Perez · 2026-10-01T18:30:03.416133+00:00

I always thought my oven was the problem, or maybe the butter brand, so I kept messing with temps and recipes for over a decade. Last month my friend Carla came over to bake with me, she runs a little shop in Boise, and she watched me pull the dough straight from the fridge and roll it cold. She asked why I was putting it in the fridge at all since my kitchen already sits at 68 degrees. Turns out I had it backwards the whole time. Chilling dough is for when your kitchen is hot or your dough is greasy, and doing it out of habit just made my butter rock hard so the cookies spread weird and came out flat. I tested it that same afternoon, same recipe, same butter, just room temp dough, and they came out thick and soft like the ones at her shop. So my question is, does anyone here actually chill their dough on purpose, and if so what temp is your kitchen when you do it?

The Community Guide

Loading…

I baked flat cookies for 12 years because I was chilling my dough wrong | Bakers - The Community Guide