A "Stupid Day" While Checking the Effect of Mixing Time

Well, this was definitely one of my "stupid days." I should have stayed in bed!

I've only had time to do baking three out of the last seven days, and what do I do today? Mess it up.

I had the butter out on the kitchen counter yesterday, meaning to make a batch of cookies yesterday evening. I was using the oven for some other food, and when I checked the butter temperature it was 75 degrees - way too warm, and definitely the effect of using the oven in the kitchen for a couple of hours before making the cookies. I can't use the butter for an experiment unless it's between 68 and 71 degrees at the start. I set the butter in the freezer for five minutes. But then I got distracted, and it was fifteen minutes. When I took it out, the temperature had dropped to 62 degrees. I waited a little longer for it to warm up, but again got distracted, and in the end I finally decided it was too late to start. I left the butter out overnight, but when I checked its temperature in the morning it was 72 - too warm. I put it in the freezer again, and this time paid close attention. Took it out - 66 degrees. It seemed kind of soft, though. I spread it in the mixer bowl and made a little butter boat in warm water in the sink. I was impatient with all this messing around, and the water was more like 85 degrees. I checked the temperature in five minutes - 75 degrees. !!!!! Put the whole mixer bowl in the freezer for about five minutes. 71 degrees. Another five minutes. 66 degrees. Put the mixer bowl in the sink again, this time with water at 71 degrees. A few minutes later after careful regular checking - finally, 68.3 degrees.

I saw the butter was very soft, much softer than usual, even though the temperature was 68.3 degrees.

I proceeded with the experiment. After creaming the butter I weighed it - the weight was way out of line with what I'd expected for six minutes of creaming! All that temperature fluctuation had really done a number on it. Of course it was perfectly usable, but for purposes of reproducibility, it had been rendered useless. I continued anyway.

My plan today was to change the way I mixed the flour. Instead of mixing the first two cups in using the mixer at Level 2 for 20 seconds and then adding the other two cups and mixing the remainder by hand for 90 seconds, I intended to mix the first two cups in using the mixer at Level 2 for 20 seconds and then add the other two cups and mix the remainder using the mixer at Level 2 for another 3 minutes. The goal was to see if mixing the flour in better would have an effect on the pitting I see in my Butt-Ugly Butter Cookies baked on the Wilton pan.

I added the first two cups of flour and after two minutes realized I had never stopped to add the second two cups of flour. That totally screwed up the procedure. When I turned around to grab the other two cups of flour, I found the cup of butter I'd weighed sitting on the scale - I hadn't remembered to add it back to the mixer bowl!!!!!

Totally, thoroughly, and irremediably distracted.

Well, the goal is to see if mixing the flour in better will have an effect on the pitting. I mixed the extra butter and flour in for two more minutes and proceeded. When I formed the rolls of dough, it wasn't nearly as sticky as I'd expected - it felt more silky to the touch. I don't know the cause for sure because the state of the butter was so different when I started. Maybe it was because of more thorough mixing, though - the average size of unmixed globs of butter should be far smaller after mixing using the beaters, and I would think that would result in a different feel to the dough when it is touched.

Anyway, they're in the refrigerator now, and tomorrow I'll probably know whether additional mixing for some undefined amount of time with the mixer fixes the problem. If there is no pitting, the answer is probably "yes". If there is still pitting, the answer is probably "no". In either case, I have to do the experiment again to know for sure, because the variations in temperature of the butter and resulting consistency change together with not knowing how long I really mixed the dough due to leaving ingredients out makes it impossible for me to know whether the procedure I'd intended to follow would have the same effects as the procedure I actually did follow. Sigh. A waste of $3 of ingredients! Ugh.

It was interesting to know that messing about with the temperature like that really threw the creaming results out of whack, though. The weight of the creamed ingredients after six minutes was only 141 grams. Using my normal procedure, the lightest weight I'd measured in my Weyauwega Creaming Experiment Series A was 165 grams, and that after 13 minutes of creaming. That's really a huge difference, and makes me wonder if the best procedure to get light cookies would not be to warm the butter to 75 degrees, then cool it back down a little before creaming. That's difficult - witness my bumbling attempts last night and this morning to get the butter to 68-71 degrees - but it would be interesting to experiment to see if I could come up with a reproducible procedure for that. I don't think I'll look at that immediately, though - not until I have thoroughly forgotten today's experience!