A Word About Chillin’

You want to set your kitchen timer to make sure you don’t end up parking your dough in the refrigerator longer than 20 or 30 minutes. The reason, because much past half an hour and the outer layers of butter (which are now very thin sheets) harden to the point they become brittle. When you attempt to roll this kind of over-chilled dough the sheets shatter, creating butter gaps in the layers. You can tell when this is happening because the surface of the dough looks like icebergs floating away from a glacier. When it happens just stop and let the dough warm up for ten minutes or so, then continue as before.

After folding you don’t need to worry about long refrigeration so much. If you’re planning on storing it overnight or in the freezer, just roll the dough out into a flat shape and cut it into batch-sized pieces. I usually make quadruple batches since one big batch is far less time consuming than four small ones, and cuts neatly crosswise into quarters. I also think a large quantity of dough is easier to work with.