Are you one of those bakers that always remembers to soften butter before baking? To space cookies on sheet pans just as the recipe instructs? Or, chills cookie dough for the full requisite 2 hours—or, gasp, overnight? Well, Im not one of those bakers.
In an effort to make as many cookies as possible, in as few batches as possible, with a limited number of baking sheets, I confess that I almost never give my cut-outs or balls the room they need. (What? Baking sheet real estate does notcomes cheap!) The result is almost always conjoined cookies, semi-circular once uncoupled (if uncoupled at all). Their misshapen looks a lasting reminder of my lack of patience and spatial awareness.
But before I go rearranging my cookie baking placement, buying sheet pans I dont need, or start proactively planning (gasp!) for softened butter needs, I think the question that needs answering most is: why do cookies spread, and how much power does a baker have, working within the confines of one recipe, to reduce that spreading? I did a few tests to figure things out—but first, the why of the matter.
Too Much Flour This may seem counterintuitive—after all, isn’t flour a key ingredient in baking? Yes, but if you add too much flour, your cookies won’t spread as they bake. Too much flour causes the dough to become dry and crumbly, which prevents it from flattening out during baking.
Cookies Baked Right Away
The cookies I baked immediately, without chilling at all, spread the most—though their movement was not detrimental to taste or appearance. This confirmed what drbabs warned against in his recipe, and why he called for a rest in the fridge or freezer. Fat in a dough not permitted to chill or solidify will encourage the dough to spread more readily.
A little less flat, these were still the cookies that most resembled the first batch we made at the Food52 offices (the photo on the left of the diptych above). That made me wonder: Perhaps I had creamed the butter and sugar less vigorously than had the original test kitchen baker, or was heavy-handed when measuring the flour. Or, maybe that same test kitchen baker had too not been a cookie angel, and baked that first batch without chilling the dough at all. Regardless of the reason, these cookies definitely emerged the thinnest and flattest of my four tests.
What Can I Do About It?
I decided to futz with drbabss Magical Marvelous Memorable Cookies to see if a few simple factors—chill time, oven temperature, and lining a cookie sheet—could really make a difference. I chose this specific recipe, one, because these cookies are known to spread (drbabs says so) and, two, because every time weve made them at the Food52 offices, theyve turned out a little different. Just take a look at how much puffier the cookies on the right (which were made more recently) are than those in the original batch:
How would changing some simple variables affect how (and how much) the cookies spread (keeping in mind, of course, that each ball would sprawl slightly differently depending on the concentration and distribution of M&Ms, granola, pretzels)? I split one batch of cookies in four and baked each a little differently:
- Baked at 375°F immediately after the dough was mixed, against the recipes instructions.
- Frozen for 20 minutes, then baked at 375°F, as the recipe recommends as an option.
- Refrigerated for 1 hour, then baked at 375°F, as the recipe recommends as an option.
- Refrigerated for 1 hour, then baked at 300°F, per a tip on King Arthur Flours website that suggests stymieing spreading by baking the cookies at a lower temperature for a longer period of time. At a lower temperature, the cookies are able to set before the fat melts, their theory goes.
Using the June Oven, a super high-tech smart oven that has a camera inside of it, peering down on the food (it can detect when youve put in broccoli versus salmon versus brownies versus delightfully-chunky but problematic cookies), I was able to watch the cookies as they spread—and to automatically record each batch in a video saved to my phone (and then geek out over this birds eye view Id never seen before!).
Heres what I saw (and found, and tasted):
How To Prevent Flat Cookies
FAQ
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