Makes about 30
You only need half the sour-cream dough for these cookies. Use the rest for more cookies or for a savory recipe that calls for puff pastry (in which case roll and fold with flour). Allow time for the dough to chill twice. If your kitchen is hot and/or the dough is soft, slide the dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and pop it into the refrigerator or freezer for 15 minutes. If it tears, patch it by sprinkling the tear with flour (be stingy with flour), and chill before carrying on.
DOUGH
| 1 | package (2¼ teaspoons) dry active rapid or regular yeast |
|---|---|
| ¼ | cup warm water |
| 3¼ | cups flour |
| 1½ | teaspoons fine sea salt |
| 1 | cup (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces |
| 1 | egg |
| ¾ | cup full-fat sour cream |
1. In a bowl, stir the yeast into the water and set aside for 5 minutes. The yeast may not bubble; that’s OK.
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2. In a food processor, combine the flour and salt. Pulse to blend them. Scatter the butter on top and pulse in 10-second spurts until the flour looks grainy.
3. In another bowl, whisk the egg and sour cream until smooth. Stir in the yeast mixture. Add the sour-cream mixture to the food processor a little at a time, pulsing after each addition. Then pulse until you have a moist dough.
4. Scrape the dough out onto a work surface and knead briefly and lightly to form a ball. Cut the ball in half, shape each piece into a flat rectangle, and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours or up to 4 days. You will use half the dough for these cookies.
COOKIES
| ½ | cup sugar |
|---|---|
| Extra sugar (for rolling) | |
| Flour (for sprinkling), if needed |
1. Have a ruler on hand. Sprinkle the work surface with some of the ½ cup sugar, place the dough on the sugar, and sprinkle with more sugar. By the end of rolling and folding, you will have used the full ½ cup.
2. Roll the dough, lifting it from time to time to make sure it’s not sticking, and sprinkling the work surface with more sugar as needed, until it is 16 inches long and 8 inches wide. It’s hard to be exact, but the closer you can come to these measurements and to having the dough twice as long as it is wide, the more evenly the cookies will puff.
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3. Fold the dough in thirds as you would a business letter by lifting the bottom third of the dough (the end closest to you) over the center of the dough, then bringing down the top third of the dough to cover the bottom fold. Turn the dough so the long side that looks like the pages of a book is on your right. This is the basic technique for rolling and it’s the one you’ll repeat, always turning the dough in the same direction, always rolling on sugar and sprinkling more sugar on top, 2 more times for a total of 3 turns.
4. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to 2 hours.
5. Set the oven at 375 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
6. Sprinkle additional sugar on the work surface and over the dough and roll the dough out to a 16-by-8-inch rectangle. Using a bench scraper, a pizza wheel, or a knife (take care not to mar your counter), cut the dough in half vertically, then horizontally into 1-inch-wide bands. You can also cut the bands crosswise in half again to make nuggets.
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7. Set them on the baking sheets 1 inch apart. Bake for 14 to 16 minutes, rotating the sheets top to bottom and front to back halfway through baking, or until the cookies are puffed and golden. Transfer the sheets to wire racks to cool. The cookies are best eaten the day they are baked.