Help! Rock Hard Pastry Dough

s a uni student, I thought it'd be nice to make some bread during lockdown and this recipe was great. The bread came out well (I've made shortcut pastry pies before but that's as far as my baking skills go) so thank you for the recipe, it was great and easy to follow :)

The way I deal with this is flattening the dough into a fairly thin disc (maybe 1/4 - 1/2 inch thick) and wrapping it in plastic to chill in the fridge, instead of as a ball or other thick blob. Makes for a quicker softening time, and avoids the issue of the inside still being hard, while the outer layer gets too soft and sticky to roll well.

I've noticed that lots of recipes tell you to chill pastry dough (for half an hour, an hour, overnight, or whatever). But they don't always mention that the dough will become hard as a rock and will need to warm up somewhat before you stand a chance of being able to roll it. As others have said, leave it out on the counter for 15 or 30 minutes. Depending on how warm your kitchen is, it will become pliable again. This is particularly true of butter doughs. Think of what happens to butter when it's cold. Same thing happens to butter doughs.

All that has happened is the fats in the dough have hardened in the cold of you fridge. Allow one half hour to pass whilst resting on the counter, in order to soften the dough. Honestly you could just cook it as is though. Hopefully, enough water will not condensate on the dough to turn it soggy while resting.

I suspect it will soften as it warms, too. Just leave it on the counter and check it periodically.

Have you let it sit out for a while to see if it softens up? If you've done that and it still is not pliable, I would just start over if you have the ingredients. Make the dough; refrigerate for 1 hour and you're good to go