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In baking, cold is your friend

When you bake at home—especially when making pie crusts—you’ve probably noticed that it’s quite difficult to work with the dough when it’s hot. It gets soft, is hard to roll out, and breaks or crumples very easily.

And this doesn’t just happen when it’s hot—even in a comfortable environment, say around 20°C (70°F), the dough will still soften after a while.

Let’s see why this happens and how to prevent it.

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Keywords for this post:Pastry Temperature Dough Preparation Butter Cold

Last modified on: August 26^th 2026

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data-ligne="All the problems with dough texture that we've encountered are due to practically one thing: the presence of butter in the dough and a temperature that's too high. Here's a brief summary of butter's textures based on its temperature:

0 to 4 °C → Very firm, hard, sometimes brittle
12–16 °C → Supple, malleable, still fairly firm
18 to 22 °C → Creamy: smooth and very pliable
23 to 28 °C → Very soft, increasingly greasy and shiny
28 to 34 °C → Melted or nearly melted
+35 °C → Liquid

|/images/recettes/base/pates/34-1.webp|"Butter in Dough"

As you can see, butter—this essential ingredient for dough—is very sensitive to heat. When you take it out of the fridge, it’s at 4°C, but it warms up quickly, and the warmer it gets, the softer it becomes—and, more importantly, the softer your dough will become.
What’s more, everything works against you: the temperature in the kitchen, the temperature of your countertop, and even the rolling pin you use on the dough.

That’s why, if you’re working with or rolling out dough and it’s difficult because it’s too soft, there’s no point in struggling: place the dough on a baking sheet and chill it, 15 minutes in the fridge or 5 minutes in the freezer, until it becomes just firm enough and pleasant to work with.

And you can repeat this process of chilling the dough as many times as necessary throughout your work.

If you’re in the middle of a disaster because your dough has fallen apart, there’s no point in trying to play Tetris with the pieces (even if it’s doable), it’s better to start from scratch: gather all the pieces into a ball, then shape it into a flat disc, roll it out loosely, and put it back in the fridge for 30 minutes to let it come together again.

To address the same problem, pastry chefs use refrigerated tables (which they call "tours"), made of marble or metal, which allow them to work with dough that’s ideally firm, even if their kitchen or bakery isn’t air-conditioned.

As you’ve likely gathered from these lessons on buttered dough, cold is your friend—it’s absolutely essential for the right texture of the butter and, therefore, your dough.
There’s no need to struggle with dough that’s too warm and difficult to work with—a quick trip to the fridge will fix everything in just a few minutes.

Note that we’ve been using pie dough as an example from the start, but this really applies to any dough containing butter— brioche dough that’s too warm, for example, is also a nightmare to work with.

In the same vein, cake batters are also affected. We don’t really handle them directly since we usually pour the batter into a pan, but even so, a cold cake batter is always an advantage, both when pouring into the pan and during baking.

Batter recipes that use melted or browned butter—such as madeleines, financiers, etc.—are also included. Although the butter is melted or browned during preparation, once the batter is ready, it’s still best to chill it to make pouring and baking easier.

In summary: To be easily handled or worked with, a dough containing butter must be very cold; if it isn’t, don’t struggle with it—stop what you’re doing and return the dough to the refrigerator for as long as necessary for it to firm up again.

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