Go to the Recipe: The Ultimate Average Chocolate Chip Cookie
Isn't Cake + Bread flour just all purpose?
My guess is that it’s all about control. AP can be so random with its protein.
Can you recommend some chocolate pistoles that don't come in an 11lb box?
Hey Josh, Kyl here. I’m one of the chefs in the kitchen here at Chefsteps. Just wanted to help with your question. The differences in how flour is labeled changes based on the protein content. The approximate protein content of all the common types of flour:
Bread Flour: 14 – 16%
All-Purpose (AP) Flour: 10 – 12%
Pastry Flour: 9%
Cake Flour: 7-8%
I'm very interested in trying this, but it's difficult (or rather, VERY expensive) to get Kosher salt here in Scotland. As you gave the measurement in grams, can we safely assume that 5.4g of any salt will do? Thanks!
You got it.. so the smallest bag we have found are these 2 pounders from Amazon: https://amzn.to/2mdlEG0. But to note, the larger bag is about $20 more than the 2# bag, but 5x the amount.
I was thinking the same thing..
Any salt will work.
Thank you.
Hi Carol,
Have you tried www.souschef.co.uk? The same Diamond Crystal 1.3kg Kosher Salt box you see in all those ChefSteps videos. However, I’m not sure if it’s any cheaper than what you’ve already noticed elsewhere. Hope this helps somehow, if you wanted to stick with the same Kosher salt. I’m sure there are other alternatives that work equally well. Success!
Nick
Thank you, Nick. I will take a look!
To elaborate slightly, different salts have different different crystal sizes, which affects the amount of air between the crystals, so different salts actually have different amounts of salt in them per unit volume. But weight is weight, so any salt will do (ignoring flavored salts). Since chefs often add salt by the pinch, they tend to standardize on a particular salt since the crystal size determines how much salt is in a pinch. Diamond Kosher seems to be the most common in professional kitchens in the US. Another difference between salts can be any anti-caking agents that some brands add, although in most cases that's not going to make much difference (I like to avoid that when canning, to get a totally clear brine). Some table salts are also iodized, and some people say they can taste the difference. I actually just made a recipe that specifically called for non-iodized table salt by volume (which I blindly went out and bought and will probably never use again lol).
I think the origin of Josh's question is the common Internet idea that you can combine cake and bread flour to approximate the gluten percentage of AP flour.
https://www.thespruceeats.com/a-substitute-for-all-purpose-flour-3976522
But your recipe claims that AP flour gave a different result than a 50:50 Cake + Bread mix, which would seem to indicate that there is a difference at the molecular level beyond simply the glueten percentage.
Cake flour is more commonly bleached than AP flour. Accordng to Bravetart, that can make a significant difference in the results.
https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/05/why-no-unbleached-cake-flour.html
I don't think the question about "why not use All Purpose flour?" was answered. It seems that if one is going 50/50, Cake Flour / Bread Flour, the result should be in the range of All Purpose Flour. 13% + 9% should average to an All Purpose percentage, no?
See what I wrote below. Hopefully CS will elaborate.
To be anal about it, only 2 of the 10 recipes (one being Grant's) used a mixture of cake and bread flour. 6 used 100% AP flour, 1 used 100% bread flour, and 1 wasn't specified. So it's not really an average of all the recipes in that regard. ;-)
@barry.marris head over to https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/the-ultimate-guide-to-chocolate-chip-cookies-understanding-the-ingredients for the flour info
Is it possible to freeze the cookie dough before Step 7 to bake at another time without any issues?
Just a quick mention: The recipe calls for pre-heating the oven in the beginning but then right after mixing everything together you put the doughballs in the fridge for 4 hrs. I guess it would be somewhat efficient to turn the oven off while fridging the cookies
Thanks for the heads-up, Julius! We’ll get that fixed.
Yes, Mark! You can definitely freeze the dough—it’s best to form the cookies and then be sure to wrap them really well before freezing. We recommend that you let frozen cookies come to room temperature before baking for the best results, but if you’re going to bake from frozen, make smaller cookies to avoid uneven baking.
Something doesn't add up here. The PDF say the ultimate average cookie has 213g of sugar total and the recipe shows 213g of Cane Sugar and 213g of Brown Sugar. So which is it? 213g or 426g?
Hey, i really want to try this recipe, but im allergic to eggs, can i use flax egg instead
The flour on the PDF only shows 200g as well. This recipe has 2x that amount (400g) so I think the recipe shown here has the sugar amount (426g total) correct proportionally to the flour. It is a little confusing in the PDF though.
All the amounts listed on the pdf are halved. It's the same recipe, just scaled down.
Its not the same thing to add 5.4g of fine salt than adding 5.4g of kosher salt! If you use fine salt you have to reduce the amount since you'll have more tiny bits of salt in you dought! So it depends on the salt you are using..
You were spot on, based on our tests there is a difference than just using AP flour. But we do state that we are splitting hairs here and AP will work if you don’t want to deal with two flours.
I'm back with another silly question. What is the diameter of a #10 cookie scoop, please? (The joys of trans-atlantic baking!)
6.75 cm
I'm about to make 4 batches for a party and I haven't even tried the recipe yet. Somebody talk some sense into me.
Make 6 batches and freeze for later, Mark!
Thank you, Kyl.
Is it Keto?
Brands for most of the ingredients used in the recipe are provided via links, with the exception of butter. I find that odd. Since the water content of different butters vary, which would impact the hydration of the dough, shouldn’t the percent butterfat in the butter used for testing be specified? I suspect a head-to-head comparison of America vs European vs Super High Butterfat (e.g., Straus 85%) butters would yield different results.
I understand how measuring the ingredients in grams or oz is the most exact, however, is there a version of the recipe for less exacting home cooks with American cups and teaspoon/tablespoon quantities? I would be OK with closest approximations;-)
Has anyone tried to make smaller size cookies with this recipe? I was thinking more the size of a silver dollar.
This is incorrect. 5.4g of kosher salt is exactly the same amount of salt as 5.4g of fine salt. That's why you weigh it, instead of measuring it by volume.
I made the 4 batches and do not regret anything at all. These are exactly the kind of cookies I like. Crispy edges and gooey center.
where's the joule
What changes should I make for high altitude baking? I’d like to try these cookies! Thanks
ghirardelli 60 bittersweet chocolate chips. I paid around $8.50 for 568 g (20oz) in my local supermarket which is not a cheap one.
If I used 1 full sheet pan instead of 2 half pans would it matter?
How does one fit 3 half sheet pans in a home refrigerator, let alone 1?
My daughter did because we only had a 1.5 tablespoon scoop. Cooking time was less.
space management
I'm guessing you don't know anything about the keto diet. The sugars and flour in this are non-keto. If you want keto, you'll need to find a non-nutritive sweetener and low carb flour. Making these changes will also impact the texture of the cookie, as all of these things have effects on the structure of the cookie.
I put the mixing bowl in the fridge before forming the cookies.
I like to fit as many dough scoops as I can on one pan without regard for final spacing, and then transfer as needed onto other pans to get the right spacing right before they go in the oven.
this is way too sweet, I reduced the sugar by 25% - can lower it more
@cory h has the right idea. We tray them all up on one tray, nice and tight, and pull them off that tray as we bake them.
Hi I've tried this recipe and it worked on me! Thanks. The shape and the thin are perfect for me, but I want to make it crispier also I reduced the sugars because I like less sweet. But how to make it crispier if I reduce the sugar? Please help. Thanks
How to you manage the egging measuring? Two eggs is 110g so do I whisk then remove 10g, or remove white or yolk, or what??
Our pastry chef Mathew tends to take away whites if he needs to pull some out. But in general he will just roll with what ever the two eggs ends up weighing.
These are seriously amazing (and large) cookies. I made two batches and took them to work...gone in less than 30 minutes.
Matthew says to raise your oven temperature and cook them a little longer. You will have to play with that a little bit to get it right for your oven.
I think the answer is to buy smaller eggs (seriously!). When making the Simple Pasta recipe, which calls for 200g of eggs, in my experience this has always measured out to 4 large eggs, almost to the gram.
Fwiw, in the original topic video, Grant looks to be surrounded by boxes of Plugra, which is a high fat German butter, and is also the butter of choice of Christina Tosi and many other pastry chefs. I think in general European butter is preferred.
For me, two extra-large eggs were 106g. I will try two large eggs next time and see if it's closer to 100g. I didn't sweat it this time, just went with the extra 6g.
Holy shamoley, these cookies are terrific. I had chips, so I used those instead of ordering pistoles. I didn't worry that my two eggs were 106g instead of 100g. Other than that, I stuck as close as I could to the recipe and got great results.
Made (a tweaked version of) these last night. Changes:
The two eggs I used weighed 113g rather than 100g after cracking them into a dish. It may have been better to try to spoon out that extra 13g, because the final dough was a bit stickier than I thought it should be.
The butter I used was half unsalted (ran out) and half salted Scottish butter with 82.2% fat.
I rested the dough balls in the fridge for 2 hours, and then took out 6 to bake last night. Half-sheet pans are too big to fit in "standard" (60cm) UK ovens, so I used three quarter-sheet pans lined with parchment paper; 2 cookies per pan. I let them rest for an hour as per the recipe, much to the dismay of my better half, who loudly complained that he'd been promised chocolate chip cookies and didn't have any yet, and here it was gone 7pm already.
I baked the first two sheets at 160C because my oven is in 5-degree C increments; again rounding down instead of up. I used the fancy "4-D" convection setting on my new oven, which is supposed to let one use up to four levels of baking sheets at a time. These cookies were way too tall for that going in, so I only used two levels. I swapped them out and around as directed. Whether it was due to the larger size of the dough balls and/or them being fairly round rather than flat on the bottoms, they took about 18 minutes or so to get to the edge-lift stage.
I let them cool in the pans while I baked the last sheet at 165C to see what effect the higher temperature had. They baked faster and got browner, but the insides looked decidedly undercooked at the edge-lift stage.
Verdict: The cookies baked at 160C were nice & crispy along the edges and chewy in the middle. Taste of the cookie part was spot on. We both felt there was enough chocolate per cookie. The cookies baked at 165C were still a little undercooked in the middle after they'd cooled, but not fatally so. Overall, a very nice cookie and worth making again.
Takeaways:
I baked mine with 82.2% butter made here in Scotland.
I just made these and allowed myself to bake off and eat one of them, and it’s a darn good cookie. I was a baker in college and this has dethroned my old recipe to become my new go-to recipe. Now I need to figure out how to convert this into a “lactation cookie” for my breastfeeding wife
Did anyone else have major issues with the baking temp and time for these cookies? My wife and I make homemade chocolate chip cookies often, using various recipes, so I know how my oven works and how consistent it is. We usually bake Thomas Keller's version which also comes from resting in the fridge (but not on the counter) straight to a ~325-340 oven for 12-14 minutes. I made this recipe last night using a gram scale (not an American who's afraid of metric here), and let it chill for 2 hours then another 1 hour on the counter. It went into a Breville oven pre-heated to 325 with convection on. After 12 minutes two of the four cookies (quarter sheet pan) were still not flattened and quite bulbous. The edges were barely brown and everything was pretty raw. It went in for another 2 minutes, then another 4 minutes. Even then the cookies were very pale and maybe even slightly raw after resting. The flavor is good but it was missing the "caramelization" you'd expect from browned cookies - for obvious reasons. I think these cookies can really work but I think I need to either majorly boost the temperature, time or both.
Thanks. I didn’t notice the boxes in the video. They do look like Pluga boxes. I use the brand often. I believe it’s made in the US (European style only).
Great Cookies! Didint trust the look of the first batch after just 12 min and the first batch turned our way crispier and darker then it should. My bad The next batches were way better. By the way I used the 50g scoops, since the only one available... and just made the balls like you would with ice cream insted of scraping of the top. They were alsomst to a point 100g as a result, obviously not as precise a method, but if you dont have the right size of scoop, why not
no.
I also had a problem with the bake temp. I keep a calibrated ThermoWorks oven probe in my oven, and after 10 min at 325 F convection the dough (50 g balls chilled 4 hrs, and rested for 1 hr at room temp) had not spread. Turning the oven to 350 F convection did not help, as the edges were already set. At least in my oven (Miele) it looks like a better bake temp is 350 F convection (what I usually use for chocolate chip cookies).
HOLY SHIT!! Best cookies ever by far
Hi David, Looks like you ran into a problem because we put the wrong temperature in here! Looking at our process guide, the temperature should be 350 °F. Sorry about that—looks like it slipped through the cracks, but has now been changed.
i got the large bag and already--since these cookies are immensely popular-have used 2/3 of the bag. just keep them cool and away from light. the pistoles are def the way to go
Do you siran wrap the tray while resting the cookie dough in the fridge on the sheet pan?
Just a thought to add - when I use my scoop, I just drop them out onto the sheet; thus resulting in a flat side rather than fully round in shape. Will be making these soon, but just a preliminary thought…
I really am anal retentive.
