Wondering how to soften crumbly and dry cookie dough? It's possible! Follow the guide below to identify some common mistakes and how you can fix each one.
When baking cookies at home, you should ideally aim for a soft, moist and chewy dough. The perfect dough consistency should be pliable and smooth, but the texture can sometimes become crumbly and dry, which may result in the making of dry cookies. It can happen for several reasons—from incorrect storing procedures to faulty recipes. Let’s say, you store the cookie dough in the refrigerator, forget about it and a few days later when you pull it out—it’s rock hard! If you have limited time in hand, and cannot wait for the cookie dough to soften naturally at room temperature, follow the tips below.
In baking recipes, fats play a critical role—adding flavour, richness, and moisture while creating tenderness, and helping the baked item to rise. The commonly used fats in baking include solid fats like margarine, butter, and shortening and liquid fats such as oils (canola oil, vegetable oil, sunflower oil, and more).
Insufficient fat use in baking recipes can reduce moisture content, making your dough (and the finished product) dry and crumbly.
Solve this problem by adding more fat. However, avoid overusing fat or it will knock off the ideal ‘cookie ratio’. Excessive use of fat will spread your cookie too much and make it overly greasy.
It is essential to note that not all fats render the same results. Make sure you are adding a suitable variety of fat—if the recipe uses butter, add 1 tablespoon of butter; similarly, if the recipe uses canola oil, add 1 tablespoon of canola oil.
Cookie recipes typically involve the use of additional liquid ingredients like yoghurt, milk, water, vanilla extract, and more. If your homemade dough is crumbly, verify the measurements of your ingredients and ensure you didn't skip anything.
To retrieve the moist texture of your cookie dough, add more liquids. If you think a particular liquid ingredient was not added following the suggested measurement, add the amount the recipe demands.
In case you are unsure why your cookie dough is dry, begin by adding one teaspoon of a liquid at once, and use your hands to knead the liquid into the dough. If you feel one teaspoon is insufficient, add another teaspoon. Continue adding one teaspoon at once until your dough becomes soft and achieves a pliable consistency.
Overmixing your cookie dough might make it dry and produce tough cookies. When water is combined with flour and mixed, it produces gluten. Gluten is responsible for adding texture to several baked items. The more you mix your dough, the more gluten is produced and the outcome will become chewier. This chewy texture works well for bagels and pizza crust, but too much gluten in your cookie dough will not give you the desired bouncy, soft texture.
Try this effective solution to fix your dough. Transfer the dough to a bowl, cover it with plastic wrap and leave it at room temperature for about an hour. Next, place the dough on a baking sheet (avoid mixing again) and bake it in the oven.
The cookie ratio plays a critical role, a perfect balance of flour and fats is needed to achieve the optimum consistency, texture and spread. If excess flour is used, it will fail to soak the fats and other liquid ingredients, and the dough will become dry. If insufficient flour is used, you will get greasy and flat cookies.
If you have overused flour, you must balance the ratio by adding more fats. Add an extra tablespoon of the fat (vegetable oil, butter, or margarine) at once. In case you have used fat in an excess amount, add a few teaspoons of sugar to achieve the 3:2:1 ratio.
These easy fixes will help solve your dough problem and produce crispy, flavourful cookies.
