Is It Okay To Thaw Frozen Cookie Dough And Refreeze It?

One thing devoted bakers always have in their freezers? Cookie dough. It lasts up to three months in the freezer in peak condition, and drop cookies can be baked right from frozen with a few minutes of extra baking time. This sets you up for convenient success when you remember at midnight you've got a bake sale to contribute to the next morning, or are having friends over, or just want a sweet treat. The benefits are why we've outlined the most convenient way to freeze cookie dough and how to freeze slice-and-bake dough. But one crucial question remains: Can you re-freeze cookie dough? Once you've taken it out of the freezer and let it thaw, is it safe or ideal to put whatever's left back in the freezer?

Yes, it's safe. But it's not ideal. If you've thawed the dough overnight in the refrigerator, the dough should have never reached high enough temperatures to invite bacteria and spoilage. But once the dough has been thawed, its flavor and texture would be compromised if it was frozen and then thawed yet again. Water in the dough that's frozen melts when it's thawed, and that water helps form the dough-structuring protein known as gluten. Refreezing means now freezing already-formed gluten, which will create a tough texture. The fat may also separate from the flour, meaning if you try to bake re-frozen and re-thawed dough, you'll get chewy, greasy cookies.

While you'd be safe making cookies with re-frozen and re-thawed cookie dough — again, providing you do the thawing in the fridge and not at room temperature. So, how can you altogether avoid having leftover dough to even consider re-freezing, and also avoid throwing any away? Try portioning out the cookie dough you make ahead of time into smaller rolls.

Before you wrap a log of cookie dough in plastic wrap – so it doesn't pick up on aromas from other things in the freezer, or get freezer burn — cut it into halves or smaller. Later, when you go to thaw some to bake, you have the option of making smaller batches without thawing a whole log and having leftovers. Even better, you can pre-shape the cookies. Scoop them onto a baking sheet and freeze until each ball is frozen, then transfer them to a freezer bag. When you go to make your best chocolate chip cookie recipe, you can take out the exact number of balls you want to bake with no leftovers to re-freeze. Finally, you could make your cookie dough edible raw by heat-treating your flour and using pasteurized eggs. It won't make your best-ever cookies, because edible cookie dough doesn't have baking soda for rise, but they'll still taste great and you can use leftover dough for mixing into ice cream and consuming right away.