Top Tips to Limit Spread in Your Roll-Out Cookie Dough (& how to edit your own recipe)

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Spread. A cookie decorator’s thorn in the side. The question is always, is your recipe a ‘no spread’ recipe? Or, how do I keep my dough from spreading?

All of the google searches, Facebook group posts, and Instagram highlights all said the same few things. ‘Add more flour. Chill your dough in the freezer. Add corn starch. Take away baking powder. Don’t over cream your butter.’

Some of those things do keep the dough from spreading, but I wanted to know why dough spreads and how the ingredients themselves affect spread through baking science.

I took an online class with a pro, bought some books, and did some testing on the recipe I had been developing for over a year.

Buckle up, and get ready to save this post to your browser reading list.

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Disclaimer: I understand that everyone has a different opinion of what a good sugar cookie is like. If you love your recipe and don’t want to change anything, don’t! If things are working great for you, and you do things differently than this post, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. ❤️

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Why ‘No Spread’ Can Be Overrated

Let’s talk about spread. Is it really all that bad? And why do recipes work so hard to prevent it at all costs? (Including *sometimes* sacrificing texture and flavor?)

The obvious reason that a no spread cookie recipe is so desirable is because you want the shape you cut the dough to be the shape you decorate. BUT spread is literally what a cookie is supposed to do in the baking process. It is natural, and a cookie that doesn’t spread at all may be a bit off on ratios. Focusing your recipe only on no spread can cause a cookie to be bland, dry, and tough.

However, there are some tips and tricks you can do using baking science to keep that spread to a minimum, keep the cookie shape, and have nice crisp edges without sacrificing texture and taste.

The key is having a balance between ‘no spread’ and the other important elements of a cookie- texture and flavor.

Quick Tips for Limiting Spread Right Now

BUTTER TEMPERATURE

It is often suggested to use cold butter rather than room temperature butter to prevent spread by making the butter in the dough as cold as possible to prevent it from melting too quickly in the oven. This is true, when butter is cold before it is placed in a hot oven, it takes longer for it to melt. This allows the proteins in the cookie to set by the heat before butter melts. However, using cold butter can prevent the butter/sugar/egg mixture from creaming properly. Little lumps of butter will be present, and once you add egg, no amount of beating will smooth them out. This will cause your dough to be melty in certain places where butter pockets are found. It is best to cream butter when it is between 65 and 70 degrees.

Never melt butter before creaming it, because that breaks the emulsion of water and fat that makes up butter. It is impossible to cream butter and sugar with melted butter, and your dough will be ruined.

If you are in a hurry and forgot to soften your butter, no worries. Plasticizing your butter will make it pliable enough to cream it with your sugar even when it’s cold. Cold butter is made up of large fat crystals, and plasticizing it breaks those crystals down into smaller fat crystals that become pliable and able to cream. A few methods to plasticize your butter: 1) Cut it into small pieces and put it alone in your mixer on low for as long as it needs to soften and become pliable. Make sure to scrape so that the entirety of the butter is smooth, 2) beat your butter with a French rolling pin, preferably between parchment or plastic wrap, until it is a nice thin sheet, 3) chop cold butter in a food processor.

CREAMING PROCESS

The creaming process of butter, sugar, and egg, sets your dough up for success. It creates an emulsion that allows the dry ingredients to incorporate well, and it also incorporates air to give the dough a light and tender texture. Over creaming your butter/sugar/egg mixture can cause spread by adding excessive air to the dough. However, under creaming your dough is probably more common than over creaming. Properly creamed butter and sugar should be smooth with no lumps. The mixture should look perfectly even with no part of it looking different in color or texture. It is so important to scrape the bowl down before adding the egg and vanillas. This is the part that gets tricky. Mixing with the egg is still part of the creaming process, and it is vital to the dough that you properly emulsify the egg mixture. It should be smooth and creamy, with no liquid or lumpy parts. It should also be a bit firm in texture and not runny. Don’t forget to scrape! If any part of the mixture is not even, keep mixing. I prefer to mix on low to medium-low to prevent excessive air buildup. Properly creaming the butter/sugar/egg allows for a stable dough that can hold as little flour as possible.

CORN STARCH

Adding a tablespoon or two to your dough will help limit spread, because corn starch adds stability to a dough and softens the proteins in flour, which also creates a lighter cookie.

OVEN TEMPERATURE

It is so important that your oven is hot enough. Once the tray of cookies is in the oven, they need to set before the butter melts. A hotter oven will set the cookies more quickly and bake faster, while a cooler oven will melt the butter faster than the cookie sets and bake the cookies more slowly overall. Oven temperature is relative to the thickness of the cookies. If you roll your cookies to 3/8″, you will need a hotter oven than someone who rolls their cookies to 5/16″. Because the dough is thicker, it takes longer to set. Make sure to get an oven thermometer to check that your oven temperature is accurate. (My oven is 15 degrees too cool!)

The Ingredients of a Sugar Cookie & What They Do

SUGAR

The courser the granule, the less it dissolves, and the less the cookie spreads. Granulated sugar is the best way to go for regular white sugar because its granules are not too course that they won’t dissolve at all, but not too fine that they dissolve too quickly.

The amount of sugar in a dough recipe will affect spread. If your dough has too much sugar in it, when it dissolves in the heat of the oven, your dough will spread. Sugar is technically a liquid ingredient because it is hydrophilic (easily dissolved in water) and because it ‘melts’ in heat. Lowering the amount of sugar in your recipe may help with spreading.

Another factor in dough spread is acidity. A more acidic dough will spread less than a less acidic dough, because acid in the dough will help the proteins set more quickly in the oven. A small source of acidity is brown sugar. (Make sure to use light brown sugar rather than dark brown sugar. Dark brown sugar is more suited to molasses and spice flavored cookies that would also have more of a chew.)

I personally prefer classic granulated sugar in my dough, and have found that lowering the amount keeps spread at a minimum as well as lowering the sweetness (in a good way).

BUTTER

Butter is an amazing fat made from heavy cream. (Did you know that whipping cream is basically another form of butter?!) No other fat will provide the flavor and texture that butter does. Unfortunately, butter is difficult to work with because if it is too cold, it cannot be used properly, and if it is too warm, it melts too quickly.

Butter needs to be between 65-70 degrees Fahrenheit for the creaming process. Once the dough is made, the dough needs to be chilled to bring the butter to a colder temperature. When it is time to bake, it is very important that the oven is at a proper temperature so that the butter doesn’t melt before the proteins in the dough are set.

Always make sure to use unsalted butter, because you never know how much salt is actually in the butter, and that will throw off the amount of salt in the entire recipe. Salted butter is meant for table/cooking use, and unsalted butter is meant for baking applications.

The best type of butter is Grade AA butter. I personally use Land ‘O Lakes unsalted butter, and it has been my favorite so far. (But the brand really doesn’t matter as long as it is Grade AA and unsalted.)

EGG

An egg is three ingredients: a whole egg, a yolk, or a white. An egg white is 90% water and 10% protein, and an egg yolk is 50% water and 50% yolk solids (containing protein, fat, and emulsifiers). The egg as a whole is meant to provide structure in a dough, and the proteins in an egg is what causes the cookie to set in the heat of the oven. Eggs are critical to a dough recipe.

But because an egg has a lot of moisture found in the white, and because we want our roll out dough to spread as little as possible, it can be helpful to remove an egg white (or more) from your recipe.

When eggs are added to butter and sugar in the creaming process, they emulsify and stabilize the mixture, giving it the ability to blend properly with the other ingredients, like flour. Eggs also prevent gluten, which is a protein structure formed by flour that gives structure to doughs. You want a lot of gluten for bread doughs, but you want very little for cookie doughs because you want the dough to be light and tender. Egg fats, proteins, and emulsifiers prevent the gluten formation.

FLOUR

The type and amount of flour will affect your dough recipe. By having a high flour to fat ratio, you can easily achieve a no spread recipe. But if the ratio is unbalanced, you can end up with a tough and dry cookie.

Bleached Cake flour is the secret ingredient to a low spread cookie. It has gone through a process that damages its starches and allows them to hold and absorb more moisture than regular flour. Because it is low protein, less gluten can be formed which produces a very tender, soft cookie.

(I use this cake flour, and this particular one is a pack of six, which is a better deal. Also, it has a great subscribe and save coupon!)

My preference is to use 50% bleached cake flour and 50% all purpose flour.

BAKING POWDER

Baking powder is commonly recommended to be left out of roll out recipes to limit spread, but it actually does not affect spread at all. Baking powder gives lift and tenderness to a dough, and it is honestly necessary to create a soft and tender cookie. Baking soda causes spread and is used in drop cookies where. you would want significant spread. Just remember, baking powder lifts and baking soda spreads.

VANILLA

Vanilla is the classic flavor that makes a cookie special. The most important elements of a good vanilla is that it is dark and pure. It doesn’t need to be the fanciest or most expensive, as long as it has those two qualities.

(I use this McCormick Vanilla Extract, which is dark, pure, and without additives. It also has a great price point, and this 25% subscribe and save coupon is awesome.)

Vanilla bean paste is a game changing ingredient to add to your cookie dough. It adds so much flavor and takes dough to a whole new level. When using vanilla bean paste, you don’t need to add extract to your recipe.

(My favorite brand for vanilla bean paste will always be Heilala Vanilla Bean Paste. The specific one I linked to is the 13.52 ounce, and it is the best deal.)

Finally, The Key To A ‘No Spread’ Recipe?

ACIDITY

The more acidic your dough is, the more quickly the proteins set, which limits the spread. Ways to increase your dough’s acidity are:

-use brown sugar (it is slightly acidic)

-use bleached cake flour (acidic)

-when baking a chocolate cookie, use regular rather than dutch process cocoa (regular is acidic, and dutch process is alkaline, and believe it or not, this can drastically affect spread in a roll out cookie)

LOW MOISTURE

Eliminating some of your dough’s moisture could be just the thing it needs to keep it from spreading. Remove one (or more) egg whites or lowering the sugar content will lower the amount of that moisture.

PROPER CREAMING METHOD

Make sure you don’t under cream the butter/sugar/egg mixture, allowing that egg to fully emulsify and the butter to be evenly distributed without lumps.

RATIOS

Baking is all about the ratios. Use a higher flour to fat ratio or even use a bit less sugar.

It is also SO important to weigh your ingredients, specifically your sugar and flours. A cup of flour can have quite a variety of weights depending on how fresh the flour is, how settled it is in your flour container, and how much you pack it into the cup. Weighing ensures that you have a perfect dough that is the same every time. Kitchen scales are so easy to use, and they are relatively inexpensive.

Learn More About Baking Science

Most of the information above came from these two books. They are amazing resources if you are really interested in diving into the world of baking science. They both explain things well and teach about many different baking techniques and baked goods.

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Best of luck in your ‘no-spread dough’ future! I hope this post helped in some way, and if it did, I would love to hear about it! Leave a comment with something new you learned! All the research I did needs to be worth it. 😉

Have a Happy Day!

Emily