How to Roll Concha Dough

Rolling concha dough is a breeze when you’ve got the right guidance. It opens up a world of creativity, especially when using cookie cutters to make unique shapes for your conchas. In this post, I’ll share my top tips and tricks for rolling concha dough, focusing on creating adorable concha hearts with the help of a heart-shaped cookie cutter.

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What is concha topping made of?

Concha topping consists of flour, sugar, butter, and flavorings. The key to making cute designs with the concha paste is to chill the paste in the fridge until you’re ready to shape your dough. If the concha paste is too warm it will melt off the dough when baked.

You'll Need:

Steps

Making the concha dough and concha paste

1. Follow my concha recipe outlined in my post Heart Conchas or my Detailed Tutorial on Mini Conchas

2. When the dough is ready, instead of proofing it for two hours, you will leave it at room temperature for 30 minutes then place it in the fridge to slowly proof over night. You will store the concha paste in the fridge as well.

Rolling the dough

3. The following day, take the dough and the concha paste out of the fridge. The concha paste will come to room temperature while you’re rolling out the dough.

4. Ensure your work surface is clean. My concha dough recipe doesn’t require additional flour to roll it out. I like to roll out my concha dough on my sheet pan.

5. Shape the cold dough into a ball and flatten it into a disc shape. This creates a base for rolling. Using a rolling pin, begin rolling the dough outwards from the center, applying even pressure to create an evenly thick circle. Rotate the dough occasionally to maintain an even shape.

6. The concha dough is elastic, it will shrink a bit into itself once it’s rolled so the goal is to roll it out as thin as possible.

Using a cookie cutter with the concha dough

7. Immediately cut out the shapes using a cookie cutter. For this tutorial I am using a heart cookie cutter about 3.5 inches in size which yielded 5 heart conchas.

8. Repeat step 5 with the scraps of dough remaining after the first round of shapes is cut out. You’ll notice that this piece of dough springs back into itself faster since it has been worked and its no longer as cold as before.

*I was able to get 4 conchas the first time I rolled out my dough. The second time I was only able to get 1 more. The remaining dough scraps after the second roll I shaped into a regular round concha.

Adding the concha paste to the dough

9. Transfer the cut out hearts to a sheet pan coated in butter leaving enough space between each concha to allow for rising during baking. Coat the top of each piece of dough with butter.

10. Using a tortilla press lined with parchment paper, flatten the concha paste (each piece of concha paste should weight about (33g).

11. Cut out a heart shape with the paste using the heart cookie cutter and place each concha paste heart on top on the dough. Score the paste with a concha stamp. a knife or bowl scraper.

Baking the conchas

12. Place the baking sheet in the oven with the light on and allow the conchas to rise for 1-2 hours, or until slightly puffy.

13. Take the tray out of the oven, preheat it to 325 F and bake the conchas for about 20-22 minutes or until the bottoms are golden brown.

14. Enjoy the aroma of freshly baked conchas in your kitchen and let them cool down before storing them in an air tight container.

Let's Stay in Touch

If you try this recipe please tag me on my socials @dayalatreats

I’d love your feedback, don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions you may have or to suggest the recipes you’d like me to create in the future.

Notes:

My biggest tip is to roll out the dough straight out of the fridge. It maintains its shape and you’ll be able to get even cut outs of dough.
The amount of conchas you get with my recipe will depend on the size of cookie cutter you use.
Weigh the concha paste and divide it by the amount conchas you are able to cut out. This ensures that every concha gets an even amount of topping.
Avoid rolling out the dough more than 3 times to prevent tough/dense conchas.
GET CREATIVE! Conchas are so fun to make and using cookie cutters opens up a whole other world of creativity.