The Importance of Resting and/or Refrigerating Cookie Dough

Resting Dough before Baking

Resting cookie dough is a critical investment in the texture and flavor of your finished product. There’s a good reason it’s a part of so many of the best cookie recipes.

The primary reason for a brief resting period is to redistribute the liquid in the dough. While the dough sits, turning from loose and soft to drier and more scoopable, the flour is hydrating, yielding cookies that will bake and brown more evenly. The sugar also absorbs moisture from the eggs and butter: With less “free moisture” hanging around, the dough has a higher concentration of sugar, and the higher this percentage, the more likely it is that you’ll get cookies with chewy centers and crispy edges.

But it’s not all about the texture: A drier, more concentrated dough also has more pronounced flavor. Let it sit for long enough—the famous Jacques Torres chocolate chip cookie, published in the New York Times, mandates a rest of at least 24 hours and up to 72—and the starches and proteins in the flour begin to break down, leading to more browning and caramelization. This allows the dry ingredients time to soak up the wet ones, which results in a firmer dough. It leads to a marvelously chewy, chocolate-rich cookie. All of this means that well-rested cookies will taste richer and more complex.

FMM: I have a cookie recipe, Soft Sour Cream Cookies, that bakes up better if the dough is left on the counter for an hour or so to hydrate. I’ve also noticed that the baking soda works during this time and creates little air bubbles making the batter nice and light.

Let Dough Rest for these cookies on the countertop: Soft Sour Cream Cookies

Resting Dough in the Refrigerator (cookies will spread less and be chewier)

Chilling cookie dough is especially important when there’s a risk of cookie spread, specifically in cookies with a high butter (and fat) content, like buttery sablé cookies and slice-and-bakes. The high fat content of these cookie recipes means that the butter will melt as soon as the cookies hit the oven. If you chill the cookie dough well prior to baking them, it will take significantly longer for the butter in the cookies to melt and cause spread.

That delay in melting gives the heat of the oven a little extra time to bake and dry out the edges and surface of the cookies, firming them up and locking them in place. Once that crust forms on the outside of the cookies, it’s just that much more difficult for the cookies to spread, which means you're more likely to end up with a more even cookie shape. The cookies will be pretty close to the size they were when you slid that cookie sheet into the oven.

Actually, it's not just the fat that contributes to spread, but also the moisture content. Chilling cookie dough gives time for the flour ans sugar to absorb some of the moisture in the cookie dough, resulting in a drier cookie dough. So, less moisture also leads to less spread.

When it’s important to stymie the spread—say, for cut-out sugar cookies, shortbread circles, intricate linzers and other rolled cookies that you’ve so carefully formed—chilling the dough is mandatory. In terms of texture, chilled cookie dough produces a more evenly golden-brown cookie with a crisper edge and chewier center.

Finally, chilling cookie dough concentrates flavor. As the dough chills, it gradually dries out due to the flour absorbing moisture, concentrating the flavors of all the ingredients.

As a general rule of thumb, you should refrigerate cookie dough for at least 30 minutes and up to 24 hours. More than that and you won't see a noticeable difference in the final product. Once the dough has chilled, let it warm up at room temperature until it's just pliable (about five to ten minutes); letting it get to be too warm will defeat the purpose of chilling the dough at all.

Refrigerate Dough for these cookies: Chocolate Chip? (test with Mom's recipe)

When to Not Refrigerate Dough (Cookies that should spread)

Cookies That Should Spread: Alexis's Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies are a supreme example of when to not refrigerate dough. The goal of this particular recipe is to create super thin, super crispy cookies that spread significantly when baking. Refrigerating the dough would prevent these cookies from spreading the way they're intended to here.

A tuile cookie, where the appeal is based in the thinness or lacy qualities, is another example when you should bake the cookie dough immediately.

Soft, Cakey Cookies: If you like a super soft peanut butter cookie or a cakey snickerdoodle, that's another instance when you would not want to refrigerate the dough before baking.

Some say you do not need to refrigerate Russian Tea Cake cookie dough before baking, because the balls will not spread in the oven. Others say you should refrigerate it to firm up the butter. If it's more convenient to prep the dough in advance, you can store it in the refrigerator for up to 12 hours. The dough will become very hard in the fridge, so you will likely need to let it sit on the counter for a little while to soften before you can easily scoop and roll it into balls.

Sugar cookies are also a common no-chill recipe, and Sally's Baking Recipes provides a variety of chilling-is-not-required cookie options — pumpkin cookies, whoopie pies, lace cookies, and shortbread cookies.

So while resting the dough means you’re another 30 or 60 minutes (or, if you’re really committed, 72 hours) away from cookies, it also means those cookies will be chewier, gooier, and more delicious.