Vacuum Sealed Cookie Dough

I think that everyone in the city has read last week's article by David Leite on the Quest for the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie. One of the main tricks from the article is to rest your dough for 36 hours before baking the cookies in order to improve the flavor. In my work as a chef I have often made cookie dough in advance and baked to order. I knew that refrigeration had beneficial effects although I had never tested the theory to the extent that David Leite did for the article. I just knew that well rested and chilled cookie dough made better cookies.

Now that I no longer have cookie dough at hand, when the craving hits I look for more immediate satisfaction. The article succeeded in awakening my craving for warm, soft cookies, I just wasn't entirely sure I wanted to go through the process of making the dough and then have to wait 36 hours to bake off the cookies. Fortunately I remembered the vacuum sealer in our kitchen. In the past we had used the vacuum sealer for pasta doughs. The process sped up the process of moisture absorption, allowing us to create silky doughs with less liquid. This seemed similar to the process described in the article of allowing the flour to fully absorb the liquid from the eggs during it's resting period. Perhaps if I vacuum sealed the cookie dough I could speed up the entire process and end up with better cookies in less time.

I used my standard chocolate chip recipe. I did not make a test batch of cookies with unprocessed dough so this was an entirely unscientific experiment. What I can tell you is that the dough darkened and became fully saturated, similar to the way that the dough usually looks after a couple of days in the refrigerator. It also changed the texture of the dough, making it a bit more elastic to the touch. The just made dough was too soft to shape and needed to chill, so I left in the fridge for about three hours before baking.

The resulting cookies were pretty damn good. They had a slightly cakey texture in the center with chewy yet crisp edges and rich buttery, caramel flavors. It was impossible to eat just one and I was thankful that I had not baked off the entire batch. Were they better than David Leite's? I really couldn't say. On the other hand I think it was clear that vacuum sealing did have a positive effect on the process, and from now on plastic wrap is out and vacuum bags are definitely in.

*This technique opens doors for other dough preparations from pie to biscuit to cracker to puff dough bases which would be able to be made and formed with very little working of the dough, just compression and nearly instant hydration.  In fact, in looking just at the process of hydration perhaps compression can and should be applied from nuts to legumes.

Comments

[kayenne]

i've read the article... would i get the same results for egg-free cookie recipes? i've a shortbread recipe that calls for butter, sugar and flour only. sometimes, i add a bit of vanilla extract.

and would the same thing - hydration, be beneficial to cake batter? or would i lose the leavening power of baking soda/powder from adding it and then refrigerating?

[P]

How will this affect yeast? Would it work with bread doughs for the autolysis process?

[Mike]

Re making pasta this way:

Do you vacuum-seal during the period you would normally rest the pasta? Are there any other differences in this technique?

[revolvingwall]

I have a vacuum sealer (small lab version) and would like to give this a try. How long did you keep it sealed before baking?

[Alastair Vaan]

Interesting. I've been vacuum sealing rye flour with water and leaving it overnight for light rye loaves. I wonder whether I don't need to actually wait that long?

[Girl Detective]

I made the NYT recipe using weights of flour rather than volumes, and covered it in plastic wrap. My dough was much lighter than yours, and the resulting cookies looked very different--a uniform thickness of about 1/4 inch. I made one batch at 31 hours and another at 47, and the later batch was browner and better. I have more details on my blog here: http://www.girldetective.net/?p=1523

[heather (errantdreams)]

Well, that settles that internal debate. I really do need to get that vacuum sealer!

[Colin]

I tried the method with a lightly kneaded pasta dough and it worked great. After reading Ruhlman's blog on tender pasta we went this route and got really tender pasta, really quickly.

[Wendy]

Cookies sound great, but I'd like to hear more about the pasta dough in the vacuum sealer.