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My aunt's bread flour advice cost me an entire Sunday
My aunt swore by bread flour for all cookies, said it makes them chewier. I used it for a batch of chocolate chip cookies last weekend and they came out like dense hockey pucks. I followed her exact recipe too, even chilled the dough for 45 minutes like she said. She finally admitted she meant cake flour and had mixed them up for 20 years. Has anyone else had a relative give them confidently terrible baking advice that wasted a full afternoon?
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taylor92924d ago
The "confidently terrible" part is what gets me, because it's not even the bad advice that wastes your day, it's the total certainty behind it. My mom told me for years that you have to pack brown sugar down hard into the cup or your cookies spread, and I believed her until I actually weighed a cup and realized I'd been adding like 30 percent extra sugar this whole time. That's the thing about family recipes, nobody ever says "this might be wrong," they say it like it came down off a mountain. Then when it fails they've got a reason ready, the oven runs hot, the butter was too soft, you overmixed it. Your aunt getting flour types mixed up for 20 years is almost impressive though, because those two are NOT close. Bread flour has way more protein, so it builds gluten and turns cookies tough, cake flour is the opposite, super soft and low protein. Honestly if you want chewy, the move is bread flour plus melted butter plus a rest in the fridge, but only if you cut it with some all purpose so it doesn't turn into a brick.
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