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Pre-calibrated pastry dough

When making pie dough (shortbread, shortcrust, sweet...), it's always a good idea to make a lot at once, and then divide it into pieces, which you can freeze.
I've already pointed out the mistake not to make, which is to form a ball before freezing.
It's difficult to roll out afterwards because the dough breaks up. Instead, form a large patty, which is much easier to roll out afterwards.

Another very practical method is to pre-roll the dough and then freeze it.

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Last modified on: March 9^th 2026

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Pre-calibrated pastry dough

As I said in the introduction, don't make a ball before freezing, but a large galette, although you can do even better with the pre-spread dough.

How does it work?

The principle is very simple: you make your dough, shortbread dough for example, you weigh the dough pieces and you form a galette with your fingers, as usual, it's afterwards that things change.

Place your galette on a sheet of baking paper.

Place a second sheet on top, and roll out as if you were going to make your tart immediately afterwards.
Note that this is very easy with soft dough that has just been kneaded, and that it doesn't stick thanks to the sheets of baking paper.
Here too, pastry rulers are handy for spreading evenly.

Once your dough is the right shape and thickness, you're done.

(don't forget to write the date and type of dough on the paper), you're going to put it directly into the freezer between its 2 sheets of paper.

What are the advantages of this method?

freezing and defrosting, due to the thinness of the dough, are very quick
The dough is protected by the 2 sheets of paper, so there's no need to wrap itYou
can take the dough disc out of the freezer, remove the 2 sheets of paper, and place it, still hard, on your tart tin, leaving it to defrost undisturbed
The dough discs take up very little space in the freezer, but on the other hand take up a lot of surface area, so you need a large enough freezer.

To sum up: to freeze pie dough very efficiently, you can pre-spread it between 2 sheets of baking paper and then freeze it with the papers.
The resulting disk of pastry is very convenient to use, thaws quickly and is already the right shape and thickness, making it easy to deep-freeze.

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