Weyauwega Butter Experiment - Two Minutes

Today I repeated the creaming experiment, creaming for two minutes. The starting temperature of the butter was about 1.7 F. higher than yesterday - just a variance in ambient temperature, I guess. I actually remembered to set the butter out this morning. That 1.7 degrees make a real difference in how the creaming feels, though. Not a big difference, but some difference. The butter was obviously a little softer, and that probably affected how much air got incorporated into the dough. I'm ambivalent about whether I should try to always start at exactly the same temperature. One the one hand, that's a variable I should try to control. On the other hand, practically speaking it's very hard to get butter to exactly a certain temperature, and if that's what's required to make great cookies every time, we're probably all fated to fail. But I don't think that's quite so necessary. I guess I'll probably just take the easy route for now - make sure it's at least 68 degrees, and I suppose if it's over 71 degrees put it in the refrigerator for five minutes or so until it drops below 71 degrees.

I'm making a few small changes to the procedure I listed yesterday.

First, instead of measuring the four cups of stirred flour directly into the sifter with the baking powder, I'll measure them into a bowl, add the baking powder, run a whisk around the bowl 24 times (why that many, don't ask me, it's just a number that felt like a reasonable effort), and then sift that into a different bowl. Trying to stir anything while it's in the sifter just seems ridiculous. :-) I hate all those transfers of flour from one container to another, though. Seems like there might be a better way to do it, but I don't know what!

Also I will weigh out the same amount of flour each time - 495 grams. It should be a little more reliable in controlling how much flour I'm using than just using level cups. I'm using Pillsbury Best All-Purpose Flour for these experiments, by the way.

And finally I realized I did some addition wrong and the amount of sugar I'm weighing out for two cups is actually 405 grams, not 505 grams like I wrote last night. I've edited that post to the correct number.

So, my very slightly modified procedure, somehow two steps shorter, is:

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 24 times briskly with a whisk.
6. Sift the weighed flour and baking powder into a third bowl.
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. 30 seconds before the end of the prescribed time, add 1 teaspoon 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. Working rapidly with one hand, work the flour into the dough with my hands for one minute and thirty seconds.
17. Divide the dough into several equal portions. (Three equal portions by weight is about 424 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.

Today when I formed the rolls I made thick rectangles of dough on the countertop and rolled them up, to try to be sure there was no air in the middle of the roll. It involved sort of pulling the dough apart and pressing down a little, and I wonder if it causes some of the included air the creaming put in to be lost. I suppose probably not more than just mixing the dough with my hands does. I don't like making those rectangles very well, but maybe - with emphasis on maybe - it was worth it.

I still saw holes in the centers of some of the cookie rounds after I sliced them. The holes aren't round in shape, they are more oblong. I noticed that they are oblong in the same direction as the flat side of the rolls from where they sit on the pan. To elaborate, the dough is fairly soft, and after I roll the dough and set it on pans in the refrigerator, the simple weight of the dough presses the roll a bit flat. When I take the rolls out of the refrigerator, they are not round cylinders any more. There is a flat spot on the bottom of each roll where it sat on the pan. If I wanted to get rid of that, I guess I would take the rolls out of the refrigerator 20 minutes or so after I put them in the fridge after they were a bit harder, and roll them again until they were round. Anyway, I am wondering if somehow the holes in the centers of the rolls are related to the deformation of the rolls from their weight. I don't know. The holes in this batch were fewer and smaller than the last batch, so either forming the rolls by rolling up rectangles helped, or the longer creaming time changed the dough enough that it was less of a problem. I don't really know which.

Regarding the holes in the center of the cookies, I noticed both yesterday and today that the spreading that takes place during baking eliminates the effect of the holes. After they are baked, you can't tell there was a hole in the center of the dough slice when the pan was put in the oven.

The cookies today spread a little less than yesterday. They were still "hole-y" but it didn't quite look like lacy Swiss. Many of the holes didn't go all the way through the cookies. It wasn't quite the pockmark effect either, but the hole effect was lessened.

I baked one batch of the same dough on the Williams-Sonoma Commercial Baking Sheet, which was one of the top three sheets I tested during calibration of the pans. Very interesting - there were no holes at all in the cookies baked on that pan! Not even any pockmarks. The cookies spread less and actually looked quite nice, although they were fairly flat. That was an important experiment. I think it shows that the extremely smooth finish of the Wilton pan together with its high heat are what cause the deterioration of the cookie during baking. It will be very interesting to see how that changes with longer creaming, and what can overcome the problem on the Wilton pan - but that's looking pretty far ahead.