Alton Brown's Lazy Tip For Better Pie Crust And Puff Pastry Is Absolutely Brilliant

Pie dough can be notoriously fiddly. Its high percentage of butter can be both a blessing for taste and texture, and a curse because it makes it so difficult to manipulate properly. Most bakers can remember at least one frustrating moment when they've ended up with a bit of a sticky mess. Celebrity and science-focused chef Alton Brown has a super simple trick that you can prep and forget, but will come to the rescue when you are dealing with any tricky dough.

Always keep a small cookie sheet in the freezer. You can also throw a sheet pan in the freezer when you start baking, but it is just as easy to keep a slim sheet tray at the bottom of the freezer (and it might make more space in your cabinets to boot). When you feel your dough start to become overly pliable and difficult to work with, you can take the sheet tray out of the freezer and press it down on the dough to firm it back up, or briefly swap out your work surface and put the frozen tray underneath the dough to help resolidify it, and then continue on your merry baking way.

If notoriously hard-to-manage phyllo dough feels like it is melting beneath your touch or your puff pastry is getting gummy, rest it on the frozen tray for a few minutes. If fresh pasta dough is starting to get the best of you, press it quickly into the frozen cookie sheet so that you can shape it as desired by hand or insert more readily into your pasta machine. Cookie dough also spreads less when it is chilled before baking, so you could try putting your portioned dough directly onto a cold sheet tray. Or, give cookies that have recently come out of the oven time to chill slightly and then transfer to the fresh from the freezer sheet tray to fully cool before storing.

Having a frozen sheet tray at the ready can help with meal prep and freezer storage too. Items like meatballs are best stored in the freezer when they are frozen individually first. Pop just-cooked meatballs onto your handy dandy frozen sheet tray, and back in the freezer they go for a quick visit before condensing into a frozen storage bag or container. In much the same way, a frozen sheet tray will speed up the flash freezing process for fruits or veggies, making them easier to store (and ultimately separate) after a longer stint in the freezer. That's a lot of headache reduction with one uncomplicated hack.