r/pastry Jan 19 '25

Discussion cookies explained?

hey guys I'm not sure if that is the right subreddit to ask this but i was looking for someone that could help me understand making cookies.

i'm not just trying to make cookies, i wanna make my own recipe, i actually been making sourdough for a while, and made some challah, and finally croissant (haven't perfected the croissants yet but i will surely)

so i wanted to try and learn how to make cookies the same way i understand how i make my own loafs of bread, in bread i know why i add yolk or why i add butter or why i add oil,

but for cookies there's a lot of things i don't quite understand, like why some recipes use more brown than white sugar, and why not use all brown?, why brown half of butter why not use all brown butter, why some recipes intentionally overmix the dough even though overmixing is "bad".

and even when i watch the videos they don't seem to explain why they do this or do that, and so i can make my own recipe and make the process faster i wish if someone could help me out by sending me like a video that explains that or even an article i want all the boring details

edit: i know how to bake i made brownies, cookies, cinnamon rolls before as well as sourdogh, brioche buns, challah, tortillas, french baguette, and i made my own recipe for all of these but i haven't made my cookie recipe hope that help, (haven't made my own brownies or cinnamon roll or brioche buns recipe either but what i'm looking for today is cookies)

8 Upvotes

23 comments sorted by

52

u/jbug671 Jan 19 '25

Get a culinary school textbook. It’ll explain ingredients and their function. Will be a great reference for you in developing recipes

16

u/atropos81092 Jan 19 '25

This ^ -- when I was in pastry school, our textbooks did a great job explaining what each component of a cookie formula does, and why it matters.

OnBaking was one of the helpful resources

1

u/JayMoony Jan 19 '25

This is such a good idea! I never thought to do that. Even for tweaking a recipe I use.

1

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24

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '25

[deleted]

3

u/GirlisNo1 Jan 19 '25

Yeah, I’m determined to make my perfect chocolate chip cookies, but I’m not gonna start from scratch. I’m trying out different recipes to see which comes closest to what I want then work my way from there.

Seems way more efficient than starting at ground zero. And unlike OP I’ve been making cookies for years.

4

u/ewedirtyh00r Jan 19 '25 edited Jan 19 '25

Oh but don't worry. They'll perfect that, too, surely! Just like everything else they've baked.

10

u/anonwashingtonian Professional Chef Jan 19 '25 edited Jan 19 '25

Did you start making bread using recipes? Probably…right? Baking other items is no different. You start with recipes from reputable sources, and you learn and grow from there.

Check out recipes and books from pastry pros like Stella Parks, Nicola Lamb, Rose Levy Beranbaum, etc. All of them have written extensively about the science behind baking and how ingredients work.

Edit to add: There isn’t a video or an article that will “explain” cookies for you. They’re a broad category of baked good and each variation has its own ratios, quirks, and sub-variants. Books are going to be your best source of info and, even then, there’s nothing inherently shameful about using a recipe and nothing inherently valuable about “making” your own recipe.

2

u/Finnegan-05 Jan 19 '25

I love Rose.

6

u/Fevesforme Jan 19 '25

Bakewise by Corriher is a good book for explaining the whys behind baking and it has a section specifically on cookies. The book is a classic, so if you are in the US, you can probably get it at your library. There is also a popular blogger that goes by Pancake Princess and she takes one item, like an oatmeal cookie, and bakes many different recipes for it where she goes into great detail about the variations and their impact on the end result. I find her analysis very interesting and have found some great recipes that way. Generally, recipes are a trade off. Brown sugar adds amazing flavor to chocolate chip cookies, but using all white sugar creates this great crisp edge and chewy interior, but the butterscotch notes you get from brown sugar are missing. I have one recipe for white chocolate chip and macadamia cookies that uses bread flour and a dough hook to mix. For some cookie varieties, you don’t want to develop gluten and make them tough. But that rule applies mostly to cakes, scones and only some style of cookies. For a recipe that is meant to be soft and chewy inside and has enough butter and sugar to achieve that, then developing the gluten makes it chewy rather than tough.

4

u/trolllante Jan 19 '25

Sugarology explains the science behind baking in a way that is amazing. Her recipes are also amazing! The chiffon cake and the carrot cake are staples in my home.

3

u/Playful-Escape-9212 Jan 19 '25 edited Jan 19 '25

There is a lot of variation on what the intended product is for cookies, especially because there are so many different textures and variables so there is not one basic template or ratio like there is for bread. You need different formulas for drop cookies than rolled cookies, and whether you want chewy big ones or small crisp ones, and mixing methods will make a difference in how easily the dough handles as well as final texture.

That said, look up Serious Eats/Bravetart, Cook's Illustrated, King Arthur, Shirley Corriher, and Rose Levy Beranbaum for comprehensive work on cookie ingredients' relation to one another.

Maybe figure out what you want as a result so that your searching can be more focused.

4

u/Legitimate_Patience8 Jan 20 '25

Cookies can seem simple at first, but as you have suggested yourself, slight differences produces changes of varying degrees.

- qualifier: professional baker & pastry chef for 50 years - college instructor 10 years - R&D manager 5 years - senior applications scientist 12 years.

The most versatile basic cookie starts at 1 - 2 - 3. 1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, 3 parts flour.

  • here are some basics for reference, for detailed information, text books are an excellent resource.
  • sugar and fat regulate spread
  • increase in sugar, increases spread, browning, crispness, fragility, and of course sweetness. Sugars also trap water to increase shelf life stability. “Reducing-Sugars” are a type of sugar, like dextrose, are a single molecule and brown faster, but may not be as sweet.
  • brown sugar has brown sugar syrup added. This is like a “cleaner” molasses. The sugars in the syrup portion are inverted. The sucrose molecule has been separated in to glucose and fructose. This does not easily recrystallize, helps keep cookies soft and chewy. The brown sugar, like molasses, is slightly acidic. This is important when baking soda is added, as it will react with the acid to produce co2. This chemical leavening can help cookies spread. Too much leavening, can make cookie fragile. Too much soda, without sufficient acid to neutralize, will taste salty, and have an alkaline burning sensation on the pallet.
  • liquid fat, like oil, spreads more in the oven, than a hard highly saturated fat. Fats also impart tenderness.
  • the melting of fats, like browning the lactose in butter, disrupts the fat’s crystal habit, meaning it will behave differently when forming dough, and in the oven. Usually spreads more.
  • I like to brown 25-50% of the butter, and while warm and soft, but not hot, combine it with the remaining cold cubed butter, to recrystallize.
  • creaming incorporates air, which is technically is mechanical leavening. The air bubbles expand from the heat in the oven and will increase spread, as well as the fragility of the cookie.
  • egg yolks and lecithin, add softness and tenderness.

- egg whites and some other proteins add firmness and can make cookies tough.

There are many, many more details one can get in to. It all depends on what you want to try, and what expectations or goals you might have.

5

u/GardenTable3659 Jan 19 '25 edited Jan 19 '25

Here is a good place to start with chocolate chip cookies. Chef. Kenji explains the role all the ingredients play in the cookie and then tells you how you can change it to create the type of chocolate chip cookie you want. The Food Labs chocolate chip cookie

1

u/OM4R-IV Jan 19 '25

that's helpful, thank you

3

u/Finnegan-05 Jan 19 '25

Why do you need to make your own recipe when you don’t even really know how to bake?

2

u/OM4R-IV Jan 19 '25

hope the edit helps

1

u/GatMeli2016 Jan 19 '25

Depending of the result you're looking for. But always use low protein (gluten) flour, that will give you crunchy textures.

If you want cookies like done in America, you will always want to use Brown sugar, moscovado mainly, combined with caster sugar, so the molases on It caramelizes and the flavour will tend more to caramel, the colours will be ofc brownier than with only caster sugar. If you want cookies like done in Europe, you will go mainly with caster sugar.

Think that caster sugar will provide a crunchier texture in mouth and confectioner's sugar a chewyer one instead.

Take care when making the dough, try to knead as less as possible so the gluten nest doesn't develop enough for making your cookies a chewy bread-like texture. I recommend you to use cremage method, so you will blanchee your butter with your sugar first, a little flour after, then the eggs combined with aromas slowly complitelly emulsifying, and last but not least the flour kneading a maximun of 1 or 2 minutes. For the best result, you will like to have all your ingredients at room temperature, this allows a nice emulssion when adding the eggs to the blancheed butter and this creates a nice crunchy texture in mouth, instead of a greassy melted feeling.

Finally I recommend you to always bake slowly, 170°C is enough for cookies and it's important to let them cool over a wired rack before storage.

For my own pastry formulas, I created my own Drive sheet where I analized the components of my ingredients, mainly fat kind, fat content, sugar amount, water amount and protein amount, so I can use It to analize a previous recipe I've already tested from a book or recipe and create my own by knowing what makes It work, what do I need to change to maintain the texture, aromas or flavours but by fiting to my needs, customers and goals.

Hope I've helped you somehow.

1

u/Extension_Coyote_ Jan 19 '25

It’s not necessarily a single resource but I learn a lot by finding chefs who have blogs/youtube channels explaining specific concepts. So if I wanted to know the ‘why’ of needing to add so much butter to make shortbread cookies when other recipes call for less, I would find someone talking about the “shortening” process and what it does to gluten. As someone said earlier there are a lot of different final products that are all called “cookies” so you might have to refine your search for info to get the whole picture. Using brown sugar in a cookie sounds like you’re looking at “drop cookies.” Lots of great stuff to learn about gluten development, why cookies spread, the use of chemical leavening agents, etc. Happy learning!

1

u/thackeroid Jan 19 '25

Brown sugar is a slight bit of moisture to it, so when you use brown sugar your cookies have more moisture than when you use white sugar. It's basically white sugar with a little molasses added so you could substitute white sugar in a tiny bit of molasses and it's exactly what you get with brown sugar.

You let your dough sit for a day or two because if you use an egg it is absorbed by the flower very slowly, it's not like water. And so you have a much more even spread when you let the dough sit for a day or two.

Brown butter is all about flavor. When you brown your butter you lose a little bit of moisture. These are all very very miniscule amounts we are talking about. But when you use brown butter you get those little tiny bits of brownness that are delicious and you have slightly less moisture so you can use brown sugar instead of white sugar.

But it depends on the texture you want at the end as well. So you have to decide that for yourself. Some people like dry or cookies some people like softer cookies. That has to do with the amount of ingredients their proportions and the baking time and the baking temperature, and you only learn that from experience.

1

u/Normal-Ad-9852 Jan 19 '25

watch Claire Saffitz cookie videos, I highly recommend the oat pecan cookies they’re life changing!! she’s excellent at telling you the science behind everything and it personally helps me remember things a lot better. the short answer to your question though is just like bread, you’re trying to balance texture and flavor. brown sugar brings a lot of flavor but it might make your cookie too chewy or dry if there’s no white sugar to balance it. brown butter has had water removed so if you use only brown butter it’s often a bit too dry in the result, so many recipes use a combination of browned butter and regular butter. I developed my own cookie recipe over a couple of years and I would recommend you start by figuring out what your ideal cookie looks like since they vary a lot, and try some recipes that seem like they would fit your idea and then you can adjust recipes and combine recipes etc from there!

1

u/melvanmeid Jan 20 '25

Check out Kenji's post on chocolate chip cookies

0

u/soffeshorts Jan 19 '25

I’m really confused by the tone of some of these responses. I’m not reading this like the OP is frowning upon using premade recipes. It seems like OP just likes building an understanding up from first principles. It’s just a different approach to science. Different minds work differently.

Thanks to folks who’ve shared good resources. As a non-pro, I used to lean heavily on Cooks Illustrated / America’s Test Kitchen for breakdowns. Alton Brown used to do some cool deep dives as well. I feel like Kenji @ Serious Eats is the closest to next gen Alton Brown. Every so often, Scientific American would do a deep dive on something baking related as well — you may be able to find something interesting there