A few days ago the New York Times ran a piece on the ultimate chocolate chip cookie. They talked to bakers at the city's best bakeries to find out what their secrets were. Turns out one thing that almost all of the bakers had in common in terms of technique was letting the cookie batter "rest" in the fridge for a while (an average of 36 hours).
In the name of science I thought I'd put their recipe and technique to the test. I made two batches, one following the NY Times' recipe calling for a precise combination of bread and cake flour (doesn't that end up more or less as all purpose flour?? whatever.) chocolate chips with a minimum of 60% cacao, and sea salt. Phew! I put that up against the "control" batch of the gold-standard Nestle Toll House recipe.
I decided that I was going to go about this business in a very systematic way (witness the "mise en place" above). Unfortunately, my brain doesn't work in a very systematic way so I didn't get very far into the Times' recipe before I veered wildly off track. I carefully measured and added the cake flour, the bread flour, the baking soda, the baking soda again...whoops. Ordinarily I would have just scooped out what looked like baking soda from the top of the flour in the bowl but that would have thrown off the validity of this experiment so I started all over again.Ultimately, my results were inconclusive. I tried them each (repeatedly) and I couldn't decide which I liked better. They were both pretty awesome. I put it to the moms in Ollie's playgroup and they also liked them both, with only one person coming down solidly on the side of the dark chocolate cookie (the Times recipe).
Last night, however, we encountered a dark horse in the quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Our friends made a fresh batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that were pretty strong contenders. They may just be better than either of the two recipes I tried. I'll have to continue my research...
3 comments:
I saw that article, too, and was tempted to try out their recipe. I was most interested in their 36 hour "resting" period for the dough idea. Can that really make a big difference? I'll have to see. On another note, Kim thinks I'm turning into a cookie snob because I have to eat chocolate chip cookies freshly baked. After a few days, they start to become stale.
All in the name of science. Like I said, my baking skills are going downhill fast, and it's OK because actually our favorite cookies are the "600 pound Gorilla Cookies" in the frozen section at BJ's. Seriously, they're very yummy. I don't think I got any of your cookies the other night though, perhaps you'll have to repeat your experiment sometime :)
What a fun experiment.. funny that you couldn't really taste the difference. If you get the recipe from your friends, that you seemed to think took first place, you will have to post the recipe. I am glad I am not the only baker that seems to get sidetracked while baking, and would just scoop out what I thought looked like baking soda! I hear you are going to Hawaii with all of the gang.. that sounds like a blast!
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