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I feel quite confident about the reproducibility of results using my procedure for the creaming experiments which I gave in my February 8 post. I think one thing that would make sense to do in a second series of creaming experiments is to find why the cookies are so flat and do the creaming again with the procedure modified to give cookies with some height.
So far, all the cookies are equally flat no matter how much air I whip into the butter/sugar mixture. But in theory, adding air to the dough is supposed to yield "lighter", less dense cookies! During the baking, most of the small pockets of air are merging to form large pockets, which don't keep the cookies' height. I tried an experiment in which I did a better job of mixing the baking powder with the flour by using my triple sifter. I have no way of actually measuring how well distributed the baking powder is throughout the flour or how broken up the baking powder particles are. Thus, I can't tell if my two sifters, described in my post of January 15, are equally effective at mixing the baking powder with flour, or if the triple sifter is better. All I can do is bake cookies with flour sifted with one sifter or the other, and see if it makes any difference in the cookies.
On January 31, I posted a photo of two batches of cookies, one batch with flour and baking soda sifted with the rotating ring sifter, and the other sifted with the triple trigger-handle sifter. The former cookies were pockmarked, and the latter were not. I wondered if the reason was that the triple sifter mixed the baking powder with the flour better. Last night I followed the creaming procedure but sifted the baking powder and flour with the triple sifter instead of the rotating ring sifter I have been using for the other experiments. I would have been excited if the cookies baked on the Wilton non-stick pan had come out great, proving the idea that the triple sifter is a key to success, but alas they did not, as you can see from the photo. It's not conclusive that the two sifters are equal, but it is obvious the problem with these cookies exists whichever sifter you use.
If I can find and correct the reason the cookies are always flat, then if I bake the cookies with different amounts of creaming, the cookies with more creaming should be higher and more crumbly. It's not the sifter - so what is the problem?
There could be more than one problem. I think I got a clue to one issue in the batch of cookies I baked last night, though. I've attached a photo. Notice that almost all of the cookies are pockmarked on only the left side. It doesn't seem to be related to their position on the pan. Remember that these cookies are made by slicing a roll of cold dough and setting the slices on the pan. When I set the slices on the pan, I usually keep the same orientation for all the cookies. If they were perfectly round I probably wouldn't, but they tend to be elongated and I try to place them on the cookie sheet in a nice orderly fashion thinking it might help them to all bake the same. Well, if most of the cookies are pockmarked only on the left side, that says to me that the part of the dough on the left side was a little different. And since the cookies are sliced from the same roll, it's saying that the dough in one part of the roll was a bit different from on the other side of the roll.
That's pointing a strong finger to uneven mixing contributing to the pockmarks. The pockmarks seem to be due to too much gas collecting together as butter melts and as baking powder releases gas into the dough. Mixing the dough well enough eliminates sizable spots where there is a concentration of butter with not much flour. It appears that the dough was not mixed well enough in the cookies I baked last night.
I have been mixing the dough with my hands. I have noticed that I more or less wind up rolling the dough around in the bowl in order to get all the flour away from the sides, rather than cutting through the dough to get the flour mixed in as well as possible. I think the flour and baking soda would get mixed in better with the beaters. The problem I have with the beaters is that thick dough gets hard to beat, and it's easy to beat it too long trying to be sure it's well-beaten. But still, if it goes through the beaters, then the flour and baking soda are definitely getting distributed throughout the butter.
The next thing I'll try will be to make several batches of cookies with flour mixed in with the beaters for different periods of time, to see if that makes the pockmarks go away. If the cookies are still flat after that, I can consider using no baking powder or more baking powder, adding a little more flour, or adding one or two egg yolks. Once I find the key to getting away from flat cookies, I can go back to the creaming to see how it affects the cookies at that point.
So far, all the cookies are equally flat no matter how much air I whip into the butter/sugar mixture. But in theory, adding air to the dough is supposed to yield "lighter", less dense cookies! During the baking, most of the small pockets of air are merging to form large pockets, which don't keep the cookies' height. I tried an experiment in which I did a better job of mixing the baking powder with the flour by using my triple sifter. I have no way of actually measuring how well distributed the baking powder is throughout the flour or how broken up the baking powder particles are. Thus, I can't tell if my two sifters, described in my post of January 15, are equally effective at mixing the baking powder with flour, or if the triple sifter is better. All I can do is bake cookies with flour sifted with one sifter or the other, and see if it makes any difference in the cookies.
On January 31, I posted a photo of two batches of cookies, one batch with flour and baking soda sifted with the rotating ring sifter, and the other sifted with the triple trigger-handle sifter. The former cookies were pockmarked, and the latter were not. I wondered if the reason was that the triple sifter mixed the baking powder with the flour better. Last night I followed the creaming procedure but sifted the baking powder and flour with the triple sifter instead of the rotating ring sifter I have been using for the other experiments. I would have been excited if the cookies baked on the Wilton non-stick pan had come out great, proving the idea that the triple sifter is a key to success, but alas they did not, as you can see from the photo. It's not conclusive that the two sifters are equal, but it is obvious the problem with these cookies exists whichever sifter you use.
If I can find and correct the reason the cookies are always flat, then if I bake the cookies with different amounts of creaming, the cookies with more creaming should be higher and more crumbly. It's not the sifter - so what is the problem?
There could be more than one problem. I think I got a clue to one issue in the batch of cookies I baked last night, though. I've attached a photo. Notice that almost all of the cookies are pockmarked on only the left side. It doesn't seem to be related to their position on the pan. Remember that these cookies are made by slicing a roll of cold dough and setting the slices on the pan. When I set the slices on the pan, I usually keep the same orientation for all the cookies. If they were perfectly round I probably wouldn't, but they tend to be elongated and I try to place them on the cookie sheet in a nice orderly fashion thinking it might help them to all bake the same. Well, if most of the cookies are pockmarked only on the left side, that says to me that the part of the dough on the left side was a little different. And since the cookies are sliced from the same roll, it's saying that the dough in one part of the roll was a bit different from on the other side of the roll.
That's pointing a strong finger to uneven mixing contributing to the pockmarks. The pockmarks seem to be due to too much gas collecting together as butter melts and as baking powder releases gas into the dough. Mixing the dough well enough eliminates sizable spots where there is a concentration of butter with not much flour. It appears that the dough was not mixed well enough in the cookies I baked last night.
I have been mixing the dough with my hands. I have noticed that I more or less wind up rolling the dough around in the bowl in order to get all the flour away from the sides, rather than cutting through the dough to get the flour mixed in as well as possible. I think the flour and baking soda would get mixed in better with the beaters. The problem I have with the beaters is that thick dough gets hard to beat, and it's easy to beat it too long trying to be sure it's well-beaten. But still, if it goes through the beaters, then the flour and baking soda are definitely getting distributed throughout the butter.
The next thing I'll try will be to make several batches of cookies with flour mixed in with the beaters for different periods of time, to see if that makes the pockmarks go away. If the cookies are still flat after that, I can consider using no baking powder or more baking powder, adding a little more flour, or adding one or two egg yolks. Once I find the key to getting away from flat cookies, I can go back to the creaming to see how it affects the cookies at that point.
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