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not for your enjoyment. With little fat and no sugar the gluten develops and the cookies become dry
as the desert.
Eggs add color, richness, structure, nutrients and a subtle flavor of their own to both cookies
and bars. The yolks' emulsifying power tenderizes, binds the dough and acts as a leavener.
Salt, at least in a small amount, is essential. To the western palate, no salt leaves any food
flat-tasting, no matter what other flavorings you mix in.
Leavening agents, most commonly baking powder, give extra lightness. Most bar recipes
and many cookie recipes include leaveners. If the recipe calls for no leavener, the air caught in the
dough during mixing expands in the oven that gives a slight leavening effect.
Commercially packaged and bakery cookies contain additional ingredients, termed
surfactants. These are organic chemicals with interesting names like crumb softener, emulsifier,
anti-staling agent and dough conditioner. When you read the label on the cookie package, here is
what you usually see: lecithin, mono- and diglycerides, diacetyl tartaric acid esters of fatty acids,
polysorbate 60, sodium stearoyl 2-lactylate and so on. Sounds like an organic chemistry lesson.
Each of these modifies the final product differently, so which ones they choose and in what
proportion depend on the purpose. They can modify dough consistency, reduce stickiness and
greasiness, or extend shelf life. Antioxidants reduce off-flavors and allow longer shelf-life. All these
additions probably benefit the food processors and commercial bakeries much more than they
benefit the consumer.
Mixing it up
There are two basic methods to make the dough:
1. Creaming. You cream butter or other fat with the sugar, salt and spices, then add eggs and
other liquids. Finally, you mix in the sifted dry ingredients. Creaming the fat has a different purpose
here than in cake batters. Here it is just a way of mixing the ingredients, and you need not be as
careful or thorough. Although air in the dough is desirable to lighten the product, it is not as
essential as in cakes.
2. One-stage. In this method you put all ingredients into one bowl and mix slowly together.
While this is a quick method, it produces denser, drier cookies and bars. Usually the more work that
goes into baking, the better the result. Try the two different methods to make the same cookie when
you are ambitious on a rainy Sunday afternoon and taste the difference for yourself.
Don't overwork your dough and give the gluten a chance to develop. Minimal mixing
ensures that, but lots of sugar and fat also help. The sugar soaks up moisture before the protein in
the flour have access to it. Without moisture, gluten cannot develop. The high fat content also
hinders gluten formation by coating the flour protein particles and insulating them from the liquid.
Nevertheless, overworking the dough jeopardizes the final quality.
If you use a mixer or food processor to combine the dough, make it quick and stop as
soon as you see all the dry ingredients incorporated. Undermixing is better than overmixing.
These doughs are so simple that hand mixing, having better control, is just as fast.
Bars and Squares
Bars or squares are the easiest to produce and most difficult to spoil. Mix up a batter, pour it
into a greased pan and put it in the oven. Not much can go wrong.
The most common error is wrong baking time—too short or too long. It is not easy to judge
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