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I have found one of the major problems with my Butt-Ugly Butter Cookies. I followed up on the clue from my February 13 post that possibly the dough was not being mixed well enough, and tried a batch mixed with the mixer for three minutes instead of being mixed by hand. That made a huge difference! I wrote yesterday about my bizarrely distracted attempt to follow a new procedure. I was indeed distressed at the procedural flaws, but the goal of the experiment was met - the cookies that resulted showed no attacks of smallpox, i.e. no pitting or pockmarks at all when baked on the Wilton pan.
I repeated the experiment, and this time managed to follow the procedure correctly. The results were about the same, again with no pitting in the cookies. Here is the procedure I followed:
1. Get 4 sticks of unsalted butter (Weyauwega brand, for now) warming up from refrigerator temperature.
2. Measure 405 grams (about 2 cups) of C&H Granulated Sugar.
3. Stir 4+ cups of unsifted Pillsbury Best All-Purpose Flour in a bowl.
4. Weigh out 495 grams (about four level cups) of the stirred flour into a second bowl.
5. Add 0.5 teaspoon baking powder to the weighed flour and stir about 40 times briskly with a whisk.
6. Sift the weighed flour and baking powder into a third bowl using the trigger-handle triple sifter.
7. When the butter has come to 68-71 degrees, record the temperature and proceed.
8. Beat the butter in the large bowl at Level 2 (folding dry ingredients) for 15 seconds.
9. Beat the butter at Level 7 (creaming speed) for 30 seconds.
10. Add sugar. Beat at Level 2 for 15 seconds.
11. Beat butter and sugar at Level 7 for the prescribed period of time.
12. 60 seconds before the end of the prescribed time, add 1 teaspoon imitation vanilla.
13. Measure the temperature of the butter/sugar mixture at the end of the creaming period.
14. Measure the weight of one level cup of the butter/sugar mixture at the end of the creaming period.
15. Add about two cups of the flour to the butter. Mix at level 2 for 20 seconds.
16. Add the remaining two cups of flour. Mix at level 2 for the prescribed period of time.
17. Divide the dough into several equal portions. (Three equal portions by weight is about 434 grams each).
18. Form each portion into a roll about 2 inches in diameter.
19. Refrigerate all the rolls for 2 hours.
20. 30 minutes before the 2 hours is up, turn the oven on to 350 F.
21. Slice the rolls into quarter-inch slices
22. Bake on my Wilton pan. Determine to 30 seconds how long it takes to bake to the point of crispness.
23. After the cookies are cooled, save several samples in a plastic bag in the freezer.
24. Take notes on the resulting cookies.
Here are the steps that are changed from the procedure listed in my post of February 4:
step 5 - stir 40 times instead of 24 with the whisk
step 6 - sift with the trigger-handle triple sifter instead of the rotating ring sifter
step 12 - add imitation vanilla 60 seconds before end of creaming time, instead of "vanilla" 30 seconds before end of creaming time
step 16 - mix at level 2 for the prescribed period of time instead of mix by hand for 90 seconds.
step 17 - one-third of the dough is about 434 grams instead of 424 grams
The key change was to step 16. The "prescribed period of time" for the mixing was 3 minutes. I'll explain the other changes, though.
On February 13 I tried just mixing in the baking powder better, and found that the cookies still came out pitted. However, I still observed a difference on an earlier date, posted on January 31, 2010, when the difference appeared to be that the baking powder was mixed in better. I have not yet proven to my satisfaction that the two sifters mix the baking powder in equally well. I think possibly the triple sifter may be a better job, and so for now I'm staying with the triple sifter and extra mixing of the baking powder with the flour in steps 5 and 6. I'll perform another experiment pitting the rotating ring sifter against the trigger-handle triple sifter in an all-out winner-take-all battle at a later date.
When I started my creaming experiments I was using Durkee Vanilla Extract. Two batches before I finished the first full series of creaming experiments I ran out of that, and switched to a bottle of Durkee Imitation Vanilla because it is cheaper and I'm not even eating these cookies, so why spend more money on vanilla flavoring? I immediately noticed that 30 seconds of mixing was not enough time to mix in the imitation vanilla, and so I increased the amount of mixing time to 60 seconds, which is barely enough. I think that real vanilla extract has some alcohol in it, while imitation vanilla is only water, and that difference is what would affect how easy it is to beat the vanilla into the butter. For now I simply modified step 12 to allow sufficient time for mixing in the imitation vanilla.
The change to step 17 is self-explanatory. The weight of the mixed dough is not the same every time, and 434 grams is closer to one-third of the average weight. I can't be sure why the weight isn't exactly the same every time, but I put it down to cumulative inaccuracies in my kitchen scale while initially measuring out the ingredients in small portions and to varying differences in amounts of dough lost from the quantity formed into rolls by me leaving bits in the bowl and on the beaters. Looking at the big picture, measurement differences on the order of 1% don't make any difference to any conclusions drawn in these experiments, but it is best, when dividing the dough into rolls, to have the quantities be as equal as possible, in order for all the cookies to be the same diameter so they bake more evenly.
I need to state that the creaming time for this experiment was 6 minutes. I unfortunately forgot to write the weight down, so I can't report the percentage of volume increase from air that was whipped into the butter.
I've attached several photos, because this is such a significant experiment.
The photo showing 18 cookies contains cookies from 3 batches baked from the dough from the procedure I've described:
- left, 6 cookies from the Wilton pan, 7 minutes
- center, 6 cookies from the Wilton pan, 7.5 minutes
- right, 6 cookies from the Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Commercial Quality Cookie Sheet, 13 minutes
Hopefully you can see that there is no pitting on any of these cookies. It would be the 7.5-minute Wilton cookies where the pitting would be expected to be the worst based on previous experiments.
The 13-minute cookies from the Williams-Sonoma baking sheet did not spread quite as much.
On February 5, 2010, I showed a photo of the cookies from the hand-mix method baked for 7 and 7.5 minutes. There was a drastic difference between the two times. Not only did the pitting appear big-time at 7.5 minutes, but the 7.5-minute cookies were also significantly browned, while the 7-minute cookies were barely baked, and in fact not all the cookies on that pan were fully baked.
You can see from today's 18-cookie photo that When the dough is well-mixed, 30 seconds does not make such an extreme difference in results. The visible differences between 7 and 7.5 minutes I observe from this batch of dough are:
- barely more browned at 7.5 minutes, such a slight difference one can hardly tell
- the edges are higher, yielding a more distinct ring around the edge, after 7.5 minutes
- the 7.5-minute cookies break with a more crisp feel, though 7-minute cookies are crisp as well.
There is another photo showing nine cookies. The three cookies on the left are 7-minute cookies from the hand-mixed procedure from the Wilton pan, showing the pitting. The three cookies in the center column are 7-minute cookies from the new procedure, mixed 3 minutes with the beaters and baked on the Wilton pan. The three cookies on the right are from the new procedure, same dough, baked on the Williams-Sonoma baking sheet. The pitting with the old procedure is obvious. This closer view reveals a bit more of the differences between the cookies baked on Wilton pan versus the Williams-Sonoma pan. The Wilton pan cookies have slightly lumpy surfaces, from where air bubble formed beneath the surface but did not break the top crust. There is also a ring around the edge, also formed, I believe, by air bubbles forming at the edge where there is more heat from the pan. Other than the lumpiness, there doesn't seem to be any textural variation on the cookies from the Wilton pan. On the Williams-Sonoma baking sheet, there is no ring around the edge, and no lumpiness. There is a slightly sandy-looking texture to the surface, with what looks to be small "cracks". These cookies are a little higher, and the cracks in surface, barely noticeable, are where the surface opened a little to allow expansion.
Another photo shows the bottoms of three cookies. On the upper left is the bottom of a 7-minute cookie baked with the hand-mix procedure, Wilton pan. On the upper right is the bottom of a 7-minute cookie baked with the 3-minute mixer procedure, Wilton pan. On the bottom is a 13-minute cookie from the 3-minute mixer procedure, Williams-Sonoma pan. The air bubbles I'm mentioned in previous posts show clearly in this photo. You can see that the bubbles are much larger when the dough is not mixed very well, and that they are the smallest on the Williams-Sonoma baking sheet. The Wilton pan delivers more heat, and that's why the bubbles are larger there.
I compared the bottoms of the cookies baked on the Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch pan made with the two methods of mixing dough. The sizes of the gas bubbles seemed the same in both batches, but it seemed like there were about twice as many bubbles visible on the bottoms of the cookies whose dough was mixed by hand.
The cookies from the Wilton pan are still very flat, even with increased mixing. The cookies from the Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Commercial Quality Cookie Sheet are fairly flat, but definitely raised a little. I have seen this difference before, but they are raised even a little more with the increased mixing. Another attached photo shows a side view of three cookies, broken, and stacked up - the same three cookies whose bottoms are shown in the photo described in the preceding paragraph. On the top is one of the 7-minute cookies from the hand-mixed procedure, Wilton pan - this particular cookie showed no pitting. In the center is a 7-minute cookie from the 3-minute mixer procedure, Wilton pan. On the bottom is a 13-minute cookie from the Williams-Sonoma baking sheet. The only difference I could observe in the side view between the two 7-minute cookies was that the one with the new procedure was a little higher. The difference in diameter is more related to the direction of the break for those two cookies. Although the bubbles were obviously more prevalent when looking at the bottoms, this particular slice through the cookie showed no big difference in the sizes of the air pockets. However, the cookie on the Williams-Sonoma pan showed a much different structure, with smaller air pockets and baked dough more evenly distributed throughout the cookie. The Williams-Sonoma cookie is significantly smaller in diameter, and the height is greater.
You may or may not be able to see in the side-view photo that the outer eighth-inch or so of both cookies baked on the Wilton pan is browned more, and that this browning apparently kept large gas bubbles from forming at the very edge of the cookie; thus on these particular specimens, the ring around the edge is actually a lower, not higher, ring around the edge. On the cookie from the Williams-Sonoma pan there is no similarly-browned edge and no ring around the edge of the cookie. I think this is may be a difference between the pans and their results that no procedural differences at this baking temperature can affect.
It's interesting that the calibration time on the Wilton pan distinctly dropped with increasing mixing - the cookies were definitely baked at 7 minutes instead of requiring 7.25 or 7.5 minutes. I didn't check shorter baking times to see exactly where the calibration point was, though, despite my procedure's step 22 - I simply didn't have time to do it, I had to leave to go somewhere.
In my opinion, the cookies baked with this procedure on the Williams-Sonoma pan are delectable, though they can probably still be improved upon. A few of them actually do have lumps, also from air bubbles, like with the Wilton pan, though the air bubbles are not as large as they get on the Wilton pan. They are a very nice golden brown and practically melt in your mouth. On a crumbly-crunchy scale, they are at about a 4 out of 10, with 1 being the most crumbly and 10 the most crunchy. They have a nicely crisp break. The cookies baked on the Wilton pan look much better than they did before, but the brown is a slightly less pleasant straight brown, and they remain flat, with notable lumps. On the crumbly-crunchy scale they seem more like a 6 or 7 out of 10, i.e. closer to crunchy. I wouldn't say they are crispier, but they take more force to chew. They are really fine for eating or even giving away, but I wouldn't think they were anything special. The ones from the Williams-Sonoma pan seem better than your average cookie, though. That might just be personal preference, though. They're certainly better than your average Butt-Ugly Butter Cookie.
The next thing I want to determine is just how long I need to mix with the electric mixer in order to avoid any pitting on the Wilton pan, and how long I can mix before the cookies become hard because of gluten formation in the dough. After that I want to see if adding eggs will help reduce the accumulation of gas into large bubbles in the dough, and so help the cookies on the Wilton pan in particular retain the height that should be given them by a long creaming time. I also want to see if the creaming time affects how long the flour has to be mixed in.
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