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Making The Perfect Cookie

1/19/2015

Cookie season is the holidays, but at my house it's everyday. If you mill your own grains you have so many options, on the type of grain to use for your cookies. No mater what flour you use here are some tips to achieve the perfect cookie.

1. Do not over mix the dough
Beat the sugar into the butter, margarine or shortening. Eggs are then added one at a time. Finally, flour and dry ingredients added. Cookies have little or no liquid ingredients so the dough is stiff compared to a muffin or cake batter.

2. Refrigerate the dough
Refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours minutes or until cold. Most cookies have a high fat content, and if left out at room temperature they will spread more than you may want when baked. Cold dough will give you a soft chewy cookie. After the dough is cold scoop your cookies.

3. Use a cookie scoop
This makes each cookie the same size allowing for even baking. For a smaller size cookie a size #40 scoop is great and a bit larger size is a #24 scoop.

4. Freeze the scooped cookies
Once the cookie dough is cold and easy to scoop, use your cookie scoop and scoop out all the cookies onto a baking sheet. Put them very close together, cover with plastic and freeze them overnight. Once they are frozen you can move them into a plastic container for long term storage if you wish. You can take out a few at a time and bake from the frozen state.

5. Prepare your cookie sheet / pans
Use a silpat or parchment paper if you like on your baking sheets. Depending on your baking sheets you may not need anything. After removing the cookies from the oven let them sit on the cookie sheet for 2-5 minutes to firm up and finish baking. Then remove to a cooling rack. Allow the cookie sheet to cool completely before putting the next batch of cookies on the sheet. Multiple pans solve this issue.

6. Don't over bake
Cookies bake in a short time, generally 8 to 15 minutes usually at 350 degrees to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Frozen dough may add a few minutes to the baking time. They can burn very easily, and they can be deceptive by looking under baked when in fact they're perfect. Many cookies rise a little bit, but usually collapse a bit when pulled from the oven. If you want soft chewy cookies under bake them, they will continue baking on the sheet. Crispy cookies leave a little longer in the oven.

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Making Better Muffins

1/19/2015

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Muffins are very versatile, they can be sweet or savory, served for breakfast or along side the turkey at Thanksgiving. There are basically two methods for making muffins.

1. Stirred
In one bowl add all the dry ingredients and combine well. In another bowl is all the beaten liquid ingredients. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and with a few swift strokes beat them together. The mixing is held to an absolute minimum which will leave some lumps just ignore them. If the batter is mixed to long, the gluten in the flour will develop and toughen the final product.

2. Creamed
The creamed method usually is for a richer and more cake like muffin. Cream the soft butter, sugar and then beating in the eggs one at a time. Beat with a mixer until light and fluffy. After creaming the butter, sugar and eggs, the dry ingredients are added alternately with the liquid ingredients starting with the dry and ending with the dry ingredients.

TRICK
I have always been taught to scoop the muffins out and put them into the oven after mixing. After reading an a blog, and I can't remember who's but they work in a bakery. They mix their muffins and put them into the refrigerator and don't bake them until the next morning when the shop opens. They probably started do this just to make the morning rush easier to handle. They discovered the muffins came out taller and more perfectly shaped. I tried it and it does make a slightly taller and better shaped muffin. You will need to lengthen the baking time by about 2 minutes or so since the dough is cold.

So chill the dough, even 2 hours makes a difference but you can let it sit overnight which might make your morning easier to handle.

Happy Baking

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Convert Your Quick Bread Recipes To Whole Grain

1/19/2015

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Lets first consider what you are going to be baking. If you are going to make products that don't require yeast, your best flour choice is going to be a soft white wheat flour, made from soft white whole grain berries. Soft White berries when milled is a pasty flour which has less gluten and produces a more tender product. The tips below are for converting your quick bread recipes to using whole grain soft white pastry flour compared to all purpose flour.

Converting your recipes from processed all purpose flour to using wholegrain pastry flour is not that difficult if you understand the three components of the wheat berry; bran, endosperm and germ. The baking properties of the whole grain flour will be different.

Wheat Berry
All grains starts life as whole grain, before they are processed and parts are removed. The whole grain berry is made up of three parts, the bran, germ and the endosperm.

The Bran; which is insoluble fiber makes up the outer cover of the berry and is about 14% of the total weight of the berry.

The Germ; which contains healthy fats, is the smallest part of the berry by weight, making up only about 3%. The germ also contains most of the berries valuable vitamins and minerals.

The Endosperm; is the largest part of the grain making up 83% or more by weight of the berry. The endosperm is mainly carbohydrates with little vitamins and minerals. Soft White berries has a greater amount of endosperm then other berries.

1 cup of processed All Purpose flour is 100% endosperm (carbohydrates)
1 cup of whole grain flour is 14% bran (roughage)
3% germ (oil)
83%+ endosperm (carbohydrates)

Bran: Will not absorb the liquid in the recipe as quickly.
Germ: Is oil which makes the absorption of liquid difficult in the recipe.
Endosperm: There is physically less of it per cup than processed flour.

Some of your recipes will work just great others you may have to tweak a bit like adjust the water or flour. Cookies and quick breads are very forgiving but cakes, biscuits and some muffins may need a bit of adjustment.

Concerned about the "wheat" taste

One option is try substituting orange juice for a small proportion of the liquid in the recipe. We have also found if the recipe has dairy in it the "wheat" taste is less pronounced.

What Works Well in Non Yeast Baked Items

Add 1-2 tablespoons per cup extra flour to your recipe, the reason is there is less endosperm in the whole grain flour. This is not usually needed with cookies and bars but definitely cakes, biscuits and some muffins. Another option is when the recipe is for all purpose flour and you will be using whole grain is to add 2 tsp. additional liquid per cup to the recipe.

Let your ingredients sit 10 -15 minutes before baking to allow the liquid to be absorbed due to the bran and the germ in the flour. If you have time, chill the dough for at least 30 minutes and up to 2 hours or overnight. Cookies will be chewy and spread less if the dough is chilled. You will have to add a few minutes to the bake time to account for the cold dough.

Add extra leavening agents due to the weight of the bran and germ in the flour. Use a minimum of 1 teaspoon of baking powder per cup of flour in the recipe.
Batters that have acid ingredients, baking soda needs to be added to neutralize the acid so the baking powder can be fully effective.

Examples of Baking Soda adjustment
1/2 tsp. soda for 1 cup buttermilk
1/4 tsp. soda for 1 tsp. vinegar or lemon juice
1/4 tsp. soda 1/4 c. to 1/2 c. molasses or honey

Adjust the recipe, take very good notes and weight out all of your ingredients, with a scale. If the recipe does not turn out exactly perfect you will have a base from which to make your next adjustments. Sometimes it takes a few tries to get it perfect, especially for cakes and some muffins.
Happy Baking!

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Making The Perfect Cookie

Making Better Muffins

Convert Your Quick Bread Recipes To Whole Grain

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