Weight of Cookie Dough with No Air Content

My next few experiments will be some detailed experiments using Crystal Farms Butter, which I have found can make excellent butter cookies. There is a lot of talk about the creaming of butter and sugar having the purpose of adding air to the cookie dough - which, of course, it does. I noticed that the volume of the dough seems to be greatly reduced as I mix the flour in. Naturally, the cookies that get baked contain the flour! So is there really a point to creaming the butter and sugar if mixing in the flour causes all the air to be removed?

Well, if that's what happened, there would indeed be no point to the creaming - but of course, that's not what actually happens. But what does happen, exactly? I want to measure how mixing the flour in changes the volume of the dough, and additionally get data on creaming with Crystal Farms butter like I got with Weyauwega butter. To do this, I will use the same method I used to measure incorporation of air during the creaming process. That starts with determining the weight of one cup of dough with no air. The weights of level cups of dough after creaming and mixing in flour are in inverse proportion to the amount of air in the dough, so a key point in each experiment will be to weigh a cup of the dough after creaming and mixing the flour for various amount of time. That will be compared with a cup of dough with no creaming or mixing. And naturally, then we'll see how the cookies actually turn out.

This is a pretty short post - I've been gone for the weekend and have little data to report. However, I have one key data point.

The weight of one cup of butter cookie dough, including butter, flour, and sugar but no air, and including the weight of the cup (54g) is 297 grams.

I obtained this weight by melting two sticks of Weyauwega brand butter, stirring in 248 grams (about 2 cups) of Pillsbury Best flour, and then using a fork to stir or mash in well 203 grams of C&H cane sugar:

2 sticks Weyauwega brand butter
248 grams Pillsbury Best flour
203 grams C&H cane sugar

This is half the amount I usually use for a recipe, just to save money on ingredients. I don't think that matters at all.

This is not ideal, though. First of all, it's not Crystal Farms brand butter. If these were critical numbers, I would of course use Crystal Farms brand butter, since I will be comparing against numbers with Crystal Farms butter. But I reason that the weight of one cup of melted butter should be the same no matter what brand of butter I use. If it were margarine versus butter, I can imagine some difference in weight, but two brands of butter, both stated to contain the same percentage of fat, should weigh the same within the accuracy of my scale. I have the Weyauwega butter in my refrigerator and won't be using it for any other cookies in the near future, but don't have any Crystal Farms butter at the moment, so I am choosing to simply use Weyauwega butter for this number.

Second, when I make dough, I add sugar, then flour, to butter at 68-71 degrees, not to melted butter. The 70-degree butter may actually have some air in it, and adding flour to creamed butter may bring some extra air in with it that is not added when adding flour to melted butter. However, I am not well-equipped to measure the amount of air in 70-degree butter or creamed butter mixed with flour, but somehow with "0 mixing time". What I need is some number against which to measure reduced weights due to air. I assume that any air in butter rises to the surface when the butter is melted, so at least it's a known starting point. Or at worst, the air does not leave the butter when it is melted. The real point is to get the weight of a cup of dough without any of the air that would be added by creaming with sugar, or lost or added by mixing creamed butter with flour. I think melting the butter, then stirring or mashing in the sugar and flour is the easiest way to create the equivalent dough without added air. If the butter is not melted, it is much too hard to mix in the other ingredients without adding a good quantity of air.

I simply weighed one cup, rather than taking several sample measurements. It would be better to take several sample measurements and average them. But the fact is, if this measurement were more accurate, the effect would be to make the percentages of incorporated air I calculate later more accurate. But I ask myself, "How much more accurate?" I guess more accurate by 1% or less. That amount of error simply doesn't matter in these experiments. Also, the only conclusions that matter are made by comparing results. Whatever error there is in this value will carry on into all the results from all these experiments. The comparisons of later results won't be changed in any way if I have a number here that's 2 grams too low, 2 grams too high, or even exactly correct to the nearest microgram. Basically, it just doesn't seem worth spending even one minute to get the most accurate number possible here - and in reality, it would probably cost me several dollars and several hours' time. I choose not to spend the money or time, and will simply use the number "297 grams" for the basis of volume calculations after mixing flour, as I use the weight 312 grams for the basis of volume calculations after creaming, but before mixing in the flour.

Finally, I didn't weigh the sticks of butter. I didn't do that, because I don't measure out butter by weight when I make cookies, or even measure it out by volume. My recipe actually says "2 cups" of butter, but I simply use four sticks. It's possible there is a slightly different amount of butter in two sticks of Weyauwega butter and two sticks of Crystal Farms butter, but then there could also be variation between packages of Crystal Farms butter. The only accurate thing to do is always to use the same weight of butter, but that's not really all that useful. I do weigh out the sugar and flour because I have observed significant differences between level cups of those ingredients, especially between brands and types of product (granulated sugar versus superfine sugar, for example) but I don't imagine much difference between butter sticks between brands. It wouldn't hurt for me to double-check later, though. I'll at least do that. But even if sticks of butter differ in weight by five grams, there is no way that would affect the weight of a level cup of dough by as much as one gram. There just isn't a reason to worry about it, as far as I am concerned.

I don't think this is perfection itself, that's for sure! But what the heck, I think it's plenty good enough.

I hope to start reporting results of these experiments this week.