April 16, 2013 - 12:04pm
An Oldie Revised?
I'm looking for people's experiences on making the mundane, yet awesome, chocolate chip cookie. Namely, I'm looking to make them from one (or more) of the three types of wheat I have here. Hard white winter, soft white, and hard red spring wheats. What would you recommned? And do you have a favourite "whole wheat" chocolate chip cookie recipe?
Thanks in advance! :D
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These are the best! http://www.culinate.com/books/collections/all_books/good_to_the_grain/chocolate_chip_cookies
Mmmmmm. Looks really good. :D And the second part of the equation would be which wheat would do these the best? Soft or hard?
I use KA White Whole Wheat, which is white spring wheat. I use this flour with good results in most of my baked goods.
Excellent. That's hard white according to google, sound right? And what about things like the autolyse process? Do you bother with it for cookies and pastries? Even for a small portion of time?
Yes it's hard white wheat and I use it often either at 100% or a 50/50 mix w/ all purpose in pancakes, cookies and quick breads.
I usually use hard red wheat for bread ( a more assertive flavor I think), and always autolyse for at least 30 min. have fun!
Here's a logistics question for you then... In the case of the above recipe, there's 3 cups flour to 2t liquid (and the 2 eggs). How the heck do you autolyse that? Or (this is my brain's grinding thoughts) should I make the whole dough, and let it sit as completed dough for half an hour or so?
I don't assess the recipe , but the purpose of the autolyse is to fully hydrate the flour before adding the salt. What I do is mix my flour with the water and levain and simply let it set to autolyse doer 30 min or so and then squish in the salt. After this is when you would start the folding or kneading. Hope this helps clarify!
That makes sense, but I'm asking about this particular recipe that you've posted. There is no plain water, or any plain liquids, in the recipe... There's vanilla extract and eggs...
Oh sorry. As far as I know there's no need to autolyse for cookies. I never do.
Ahhh. Good to know. :D Guess I'll stop letting the dough sit there then... :D Going to go bake some of these and let you know the Toddler Tasting Test results!
Forgot to come back to tell ya. :P
So, what I did is took that recipe, made it, and let it sit for about half an hour (as finished dough) on the counter. It did change the doughy texture a bit from immediately after it was "finished". Then I added in the chocolate chips, and used an ice-cream scoop to dish out portions, baked for 17 minutes at 350F. Made about 2 dozen per batch. Resulting cookies were friggin' amazing. I've been making cookies for ... 30+ years? And while I know I've made cookies that were chewier, or sweeter, or chocolatier, but never ones that were healthier while being all of that. :P So, this recipe will be a keeper. I'll just figure out how to modify it properly... I'm thinking of adding a really ripe banana to the mix, and seeing what happens. :P
Oh, I used 50/40/10 white hard/red hard/white soft wheats. Also, I'm on a health kick, so I used raw, organic cane sugar for the sugar, and farm eggs and butter, and homemade REAL vanilla. :D I'll definitely make more of these. :D Anyone else have any recipes to share? :D
Okay I thought all this talk about strong vs. everyday flour for cookies was ridiculous.
Does it really effect a cookie's chewiness?
Heh. Yeah it was a bit silly of a conversation. But it helped me find what was needed.
And personally, letting the dough sit for a little bit, did, in fact, affect it's chewiness. The batches where I let them sit and rest a while were much less crumbly. :)
Noob, I wasn't being condescending, pardon moi!
I was actually quite intrigued about this use of strong flour in non-bread baking. I did try it once in a baking powder stollen, and noticed no difference at all to the crumb.
I agree, letting the dough sit and baking from chilled does affect 'doneness' rather than chewiness. The centre tends to be baked less than when baking from a fresh cookie dough. (I actually find it a bit too raw)
I've never actually had a chewy choc chip cookie. I actually, suspect, it's not humanly possible. I only draw this conclusion because at the supermarket I have that annoying habit like everyone else of giving the fresh, american-style cookies a jolly, good squeeze in the paper bag. And as suspected, it's always the choc chip that are hard and ungiving, whilst the rest are bendy, buckly, and fragile. They can sit for 5 days on the shelf, so maybe I only squeeze them on the wrong day, i.e. too late! They may be very soft 'freshly baked'.
But for double chocolate chip cookies, when baked from chilled, it's always 'chewy' in the centre when baking from a chilled dough. Nor does the recipe I use req. strong flour.
I've seen the KAF WW choc chip cookie is highly rated, if you ever give it a go, update us. I'd be interested. :)