4 Levels of Chocolate Chip Cookies: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

my name is Alena my name is Lorenzo ready there rumble hi I'm penny I've been baking professionally for 14 years now the last time I made chocolate chip cookies was so long ago this past winter for sure but I've actually been cooking for 14 15 years at my retail bakery we made chocolate chip cookies pretty much every single day we start with dry ingredients two and a quarter cups of flour all-purpose flour you really have to be precise with this especially flour eleven ounces of all-purpose flour as a professional pastry chef instead of using volume measurements we weigh all of our ingredients and then we have salt granulated white salt we're using sea salt today sea salt is great because it has some impurity still left behind it's in the impurities where the flavor is next we're gonna do baking soda baking soda make sure it's baking soda and not powder and baking powder we want a really thick cookie and the combination of baking powder and baking soda is gonna help me achieve that so I'm gonna start my wet ingredients we have two sticks of softened butter you will have to put them in the microwave I have two sticks of butter room temperature unsalted so not only do I want to melt my butter I actually want to smoke it and that's one of the ways and I'm gonna add a little bit more of a savoriness to the cookie I'm gonna poke a little hole and insert the tip of the smoker about 40 minutes or so I'll be ready to finish my cookies I'm gonna get the sugars which we have brown sugar and white granulated sugar extract all right a little bit more than teaspoon okay we'll just go with that instead of vanilla extract I'm gonna use an actual fresh vanilla bean now I'm going to get my eggs [Laughter] super super yellow yolks comes from the feed of the chicken butter and that's it it's ready for the chocolate the favorite part two cups of the chocolate chips what just to give it some pizzazz I'm little food I like to add bittersweet chocolate just crack it up in your hands open the package up if you want it a little bit fire that's fine just get your knife be careful please I really like these Pheebs which are a Kovich or chocolate 74% and then bakes off into great shards on chocolate throughout the cookie I have a really big scoop here which is about 4 ounces I like to scoop them if the cookies are all different sizes they're gonna bake at different rates one important step is to freeze the cookie dough for 24 hours before you bake the cookies it allows the flavors to meld and you get a more complex interesting cookie and I also smoked this salt as well to amplify the smoky flavor that would be in the butter so just sprinkle a little bit on top these are ready for the oven now we're going to cook them at 375 degrees for about 9 to 11 minutes I'm gonna throw these in at 375 for 11 to 13 minutes these are gonna bake for about 25 to 28 minutes in a 275 degree oven let's see if we can get this out they went in a little bit longer than they should have and they got so much bigger [Music] all right let's see they've got the chocolate chips they're a little melted okay see it's golden-brown it's actually smells terrific I can see all the chunks of chocolate the bittersweet the semi-sweet chocolate the cookie is really nice and thick and it's very evenly browned all the way around the edges are nice and crispy and the middle is still really soft and there you can see all the shards of the chocolate that's part will go up I make a good cookie that's a good good chocolate chip folks if I do say so myself now that we've seen three different chefs make three different versions of chocolate chip cookies I'm gonna break it down to see what was different between each version in baking science weighing is really important that's important that the recipe is the same this time as it was the last time with Elena's variation there was a little bit messy looks good enough and so we don't have a lot of precision there these are not gonna be even at all not all of the cookies are gonna look the same they still look good Lorenzo did a little bit better it is important to level it off a little bit use your finger use a spoon but we're gonna have some variation because there's things like humidity in the climate where you're baking that are gonna come into play sorry sugars have properties that are called hygroscopic properties they soak up moisture from the air starches can do it as well so depending on the environment you're cooking in if you have a real moist or humid environment or it's even just a rainy day where you're making your cookies it's gonna make a difference oh you don't penny really did a good job put them in the microwave just cut it up a little bit I only do I want to melt my butter I actually want to smoke it each one of our chefs did something really different with the butter Alena use the microwave to melt her butter I'll have to put them in the microwave that's okay but in reality you get some liquid portions and you get some solid portions so it's not gonna be a great way to mix your sugar this is like a semi workout right now but Lorenzo did is he used butter amateur there you go that's a really good idea that's right for the creaming method when you use room-temperature butter you can incorporate lots of air when you add crystal and sugar to the mix that makes for a nice porous light kind of cookie but penny did is different and interesting she used a melted butter so not only does it give that butter flavor but it's going to be evenly distributed throughout the entire batter and you're gonna get a more dense chewy cookie it's really nice and chewy on the inside may be really good with a glass of bourbon next to it some of the chocolates that you get may be in a chocolate chip bag okay there we go might not be the highest quality chocolate do they taste good it's pretty good yes but they're not gonna be tempered they may have emulsifiers added to it they may have other ingredients that won't cause them to melt as easily as some of your coverture chocolate does and that's it things that have been tempered things that have gone through a conching process you're gonna have more of a layering effect you can see all the shards of the chocolate that have made different layers of chocolate and dough when you think of a chocolate chip cookie you're probably thinking first and foremost about the sweetness of the cookie but if you add a little bit of sea salt or any kind of salt to the top of your cookie it's going to really enhance that flavor [Music] there have actually been studies done that show that some of the sensory cells that are associated with sweetness that used to be found just in the gut in mice now are associated with sweetness and enhanced by the presence of sodium and we get sodium from the salts that we eat okey doke you for know you smoking the salt adds another layer of flavor to your chocolate chip cookie to amplify the smoky flavor that would be in the butter this is a really interesting idea thank you and what makes it unique is that the smoky quality and the smoky flavors are going to balance out the bitter quality of the high-end chocolate that she uses and it's also going to balance out the saltiness as well as the sweetness from the rest of the cookie many traditional chocolate chip cookie recipes call for the use of sodium bicarbonate or baking soda make sure it's baking soda when you heat sodium bicarbonate you get something called sodium carbonate which has a little bit of a soapy bitter taste to balance that out we want to add an acidic component if you're using the baking soda a short soda you're going to need an acid and if you're using just baking powder powders different folks the acid is already in there in a chemical form so you're good to go penny let her dough rest for 24 hours and there's a lot going on when we do that one of the important things is we have some of our flavoring components that are in our batter they're hydrated they're mixed well and your flavor profile becomes far more complex make a good cookie when it comes to sugars you have options you can use white sugar which is crystal and sucrose with brown sugar its sucrose but it's also coated with molasses molasses is a byproduct of the sugar making processing you also have things like magnesium and iron and other types of minerals that add a depth of flavor to the brown sugar that you won't have with the white sugar the brown sugar also have this capacity to hold on to water and so you're gonna have this moist chewy more dense kind of cookie when you have the brown sugar so there's a whole lot going on chemically with chocolate chip cookies it's all about knowing the ratios and ingredients that you want to use in your recipe and knowing how they work with the other ingredients that are there that are going to make your cookie have the different types of properties that you're looking for but regardless of all of that everybody's always gonna love chocolate chip cookies [Music]

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 10,337,154

Rating: 4.8840432 out of 5

Keywords: chocolate, chocolate chip cookie, cookie, 4 levels, chocolate chip cookie recipe, how to make chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chip cookies, easy chocolate chip cookies, best chocolate chip cookies, making chocolate chip cookie, 4 levels of, food scientist, chocolate chip, cookie recipe, making cookie, how to make cookies, make chocolate chip cookies, amateur chef, professional chef, homemade chocolate chip cookies, cookies, expert cookies, best cookies, epicurious

Id: sI7E8J1sGvw

Length: 10min 13sec (613 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 17 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/AQuietRussian]

Honestly, the professionals didn't look that appetizing to me. I like Lorenzo's...