Baking with convection yields a rounded, taller cookie with a crisp exterior. Even heat created by the air circulating in convection yields the irresistible combination of crunchy and gooey – and some say it’s the secret to the perfect cookie. But, if you prefer a softer, chewy cookie, use Bake mode without convection.
Baking Perfect Cookies:
Cookies should be of a uniform thickness and size so they will bake in the same amount of time. Using a small cookie scoop or ice cream scoop will provide picture-perfect, uniform size cookies. To get uniform cookies, weigh the cookie dough.
While butter contains air pockets that help it retain its shape, oil is more compact. You can’t really alter it from its original state. Not to mention, using a flavorful oil such as olive oil in a cookie might give you a baked product that’s just a little on the funkier side. Naturally, you can expect a softer dough.
Double Your Yolks Most cookie recipes call for at least one egg. You can try omitting the white of each egg, which tends to dry out when baked, and replacing it with an additional yolk Plus, egg yolks have more fat than egg whites, which helps to keep your cookies moist and chewy.
Cookie temperatures fluctuate, with some recipes as low as 300 degrees Fahrenheit, and a few as high as 425 degrees Fahrenheit, but most recipes land on 375 or 350 to evenly bake the entirety of the cookie.
What type of oven do professional bakers use?
Convection ovens are one of the most common pieces of commercial bakery equipment. They do a great job of quickly and evenly baking a variety of products, from bread loaves to cookies to cakes, pies, and brownies. Their use of internal fans to circulate the air creates even browning and repeatable results.
Baking cookies quickly in a hot oven – at 375 degrees F as opposed to a lower temperature – will make for soft results. They’ll bake fast instead of sitting and drying out in the oven’s hot air. Ever so slightly underbaking your cookies will give you softer results than cooking them the full amount the recipe says.
Chilling cookie dough controls spread.
Chilling cookie dough before baking solidifies the fat in the cookies. As the cookies bake, the fat in the chilled cookie dough takes longer to melt than room-temperature fat. And the longer the fat remains solid, the less cookies spread.
Tips for getting that perfect cookie texture
- If you want chewy cookies, add melted butter. Butter is 20 percent water.
- If you want thin, candy-like cookies, add more sugar.
- If you want cakey cookies, add more eggs.
- If you want an open, coarse crumb and craggy top, add baking soda.
Milk performs many functions in your baked goods. It serves as a source of liquid to hydrate the dry ingredients, adds flavor, supports browning and softens texture.
Choosing a vegetable oil is the best option for baking moist, delicious baked goods. Canola oil, the most common vegetable oil used in baking, doesn’t add a strong flavor. It allows your cake’s flavor will shine through while still achieving a moist texture.
When baking with oil instead of butter in your recipes, keep in mind that some cookies just won’t work as they’re supposed to without a solid fat. Try replacing just half the butter with oil, which still cuts your saturated fats but retains much of the cookies’ original texture.
They go from soft to hard because they start to dry out, and it begins as soon as you pull them from the oven. (Yikes.) Whatever moisture is left in the cookies is always in a state of evaporation. At the same time, the sugars and starches are solidifying.
While brown sugar keeps your cookies moist and soft, white sugar and corn syrup will help your cookies spread and crisp in the oven. Using more white sugar in your cookies will result in a crispier end product. To achieve a crispy cookie, skip the rest in the fridge.
Adding more moisture to your dough in the form of extra butter, egg yolks, or brown sugar will make your cookies even softer. We go into even more detail on how to achieve chewy perfection here.
Cookies should (almost) always be baked on the middle rack of the oven. The middle rack offers the most even heat and air circulation which helps cookies bake consistently.
The short answer is, you can expect to bake cookies at 350 degrees F for between 8 to 12 minutes. That said, a lot needs to be put into consideration when determining how long to bake your cookies – the type of cookies, the size of the cookies, and the content in the dough.
Issues with cracking usually derive from the sugar coating, not enough or expired baking powder or baking soda, or the oven temperature isn’t hot enough. Solution: Granulated sugar is more effective at drying the surface than powdered sugar.
What is the best oven setting for baking?
Top/Bottom heating is the most effective setting to use when you are baking or roasting on a single level. The heat is emitted evenly from above and below, making it ideal for baking cakes.
Is a gas or electric oven better for baking?
A gas oven has better temperature control and it is easier to keep the temperature constant to avoid burnt food and uneven cooking. Due to the combustion process, gas ovens have more moisture on the inside which can be perfect for baking foods that should have a soft and moist surface.
Baking Cookies in Convection Ovens
Cookies are one of the baked goods that are best suited for convection ovens. The circulating hot air can be a problem for anything at all delicate, like light and fluffy cakes or yeast breads, but most cookies aren’t as disturbed by the air movement in the oven.
9 Tips to Remember
- Use Real Butter and Keep It Cool. The low melting point of butter may be what makes your cookies flat.
- Use Shortening.
- Chill Dough Twice.
- Use Parchment Paper or a Silicone Liner.
- Measure Precisely.
- Use Fresh Baking Soda.
- Use Optional Add-Ins.
- Buy an Oven Thermometer.
Carbon dioxide gas and water vapor form the bubbles which make cookies rise. Rising doesn’t just make cookies taller. It also opens up space to keep the cookie from becoming too dense. Salt slows down the decomposition of baking soda, so the bubbles don’t get too big.
For softer, chewier cookies, you will want to add much less granulated sugar, slightly more brown sugar, and a fair bit less butter. For cakey cookies, you will often be including even less butter and sugar.
Water vapor escaping from the dough in combination with the carbon dioxide released by our baking soda is ultimately what makes our cookies light and airy.
Let it sit for long enough—the famous Jacques Torres chocolate chip cookie, published in the New York Times, mandates a rest of at least 24 hours and up to 72—and the starches and proteins in the flour begin to break down, leading to more browning and caramelization.
As a result, the cookies will expand more slowly, holding onto their texture. If you skip the chilling step, you’re more likely to wind up with flat, sad disks instead of lovely, chewy cookies. Cookies made from chilled dough are also much more flavorful.
While baking soda will create a coarse, chewy cookie texture, baking powder will produce a light, fine cookie texture. To achieve the best cookie results, use a double-acting baking powder as a substitute.
It is possible to make cookies without baking soda or baking powder, but the resulting cookie will be dense. This is because carbon dioxide is not being produced by a chemical reaction that typically occurs when baking soda or powder is present in the cookie batter.
Whatever you do, always add the brown butter before adding the eggs and dry ingredients — otherwise you risk changing the texture of your cookie.
If you mix (or roll out) cookie dough too much, you’ll add excess air to the dough, causing it to rise and then fall flat in the oven. Overmixing the dough can also lead to excess gluten development, resulting in dense cookies.
When eggs aren’t added, the cookies become dense, crumbly, and don’t spread out. While eggs may not add much in terms of flavor to a cookie, they’re still a vital ingredient. Without them, cookies will crumble apart and become too dry to enjoy. Texture is very important to a cookie.
Among other milk alternatives like almond milk, soy milk and oat milk, soy milk is by far the best for baking. I learned this over the course of several years and many cookies, cakes, muffins and pies.
Bakers and chefs usually choose unsalted butter in their recipes because it’s easier to manage the salt content in the dish. Most recipes that call for butter—especially baked goods and desserts—are created with unsalted butter. It is the standard in baking and is always implied unless otherwise specified.
Eggs add structure, leavening, color, and flavor to our cakes and cookies. It’s the balance between eggs and flour that help provide the height and texture of many of the baked goods here on Joy the Baker. It’s a balancing act.
Is baking powder the same as baking soda?
The bottom line
While both products appear similar, they’re certainly not the same. Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, which requires an acid and a liquid to become activated and help baked goods rise. Conversely, baking powder includes sodium bicarbonate, as well as an acid. It only needs a liquid to become activated.
What is the healthiest oil to bake with?
Healthy fats
For higher heat cooking or baking, consider almond, peanut oil or avocado oil for good ways to get monounsaturated fats. Polyunsaturated fats (omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids): Focus on eating more foods packed with omega-3s.
What’s better oil or butter?
Although butter contains saturated fats but these fats are heart-healthy while the poly-unsaturated fat (omega 6 fatty acid) in oils are unwanted fats which may cause inflammation, and should be avoided.
How much butter should I use in place of 1/2 cup oil?
1/2 cup of oil = 2/3 cup of butter.
Bakery or homemade cookies can be stored at room temperature two to three weeks or two months in the refrigerator. Cookies retain their quality when stored in the freezer for eight to 12 months. Moist bars, such as cheesecake and lemon bars, can be refrigerated for seven days.
Keeping them on the sheet too long after baking can cause them to get hard or stick to the sheet. Cookies are done when they are firmly set and lightly browned. When you touch them lightly with your finger, almost no imprint will remain.
Pastry Flour: An unbleached flour made from soft wheat, with protein levels somewhere between cake flour and all-purpose flour (8 to 9 percent). Pastry flour strikes the ideal balance between flakiness and tenderness, making it perfect for pies, tarts and many cookies.
Sugars, like fats liquefy in the oven. White sugar will make your cookies crispier while brown sugar contains more moisture and will result in a softer and more chewy cookie. Most chocolate chip cookie recipes call for both sugars.
The most common cause is using a different flour than usual, such as cake flour, and measuring flour with too heavy a hand. Using larger eggs than called for can make cookies cakey, as will the addition of milk or more milk or other liquids than specified.
Most cookies are baked at a fairly high temperature for a short time. Why would you double-pan a batch of cookies? To prevent burning the bottoms of the cookies.
Using melted butter in cookies helps you achieve a similar fudgy-yet-cooked texture and prevents any unwanted cakiness. Instead of the rise coming from both chemical and physical leavening agents (baking soda/powder + creamed butter), it now comes almost exclusively from chemical agents alone.
Your Butter Came Straight From the Fridge
This relates to the issue of creaming, because cold butter is more difficult to cream. Thus, if your butter is too cold, your cookies will be denser, and they will likely not spread enough in the pan when you bake them. In general, you want your butter to be cool, but not cold.
Vinegar is a surprisingly common ingredient in baked goods, considering that it has such a sharp flavor. But as an acid, vinegar is often included in cake and cookie batters to react with baking soda and start the chemical reaction needed to produce carbon dioxide and give those batters a lift as they bake.
For more even baking, position oven rack at the center of the oven and bake one sheet of cookies at a time. If you prefer to bake two sheets, space racks so oven is divided into thirds and switch cookie sheets top to bottom and back to front halfway through baking.
Even heat created by the air circulating in convection yields the irresistible combination of crunchy and gooey – and some say it’s the secret to the perfect cookie. But, if you prefer a softer, chewy cookie, use Bake mode without convection.
Cookie temperatures fluctuate, with some recipes as low as 300 degrees Fahrenheit, and a few as high as 425 degrees Fahrenheit, but most recipes land on 375 or 350 to evenly bake the entirety of the cookie.
Baking cookies quickly in a hot oven – at 375 degrees F as opposed to a lower temperature – will make for soft results. They’ll bake fast instead of sitting and drying out in the oven’s hot air. Ever so slightly underbaking your cookies will give you softer results than cooking them the full amount the recipe says.
Problem #4: Pale and soft cookies
They were probably baked from a good consistency dough but ended up a bit under baked and raw on the inside. Either the oven temperature is too low or they were taken out too soon. When baking always keep an eye on your cookies and take them out when they’re golden.
Why Do Cookies Get Hard? Like all baked treats, cookies are subject to getting stale. Over time, the moisture in the cookies evaporates, leaving them stiff and crumbly. It’s the same thing that happens to breads, muffins, and other baked goods.
If your cookies repeatedly turn out flat, no matter the recipe, chances are your oven is too hot. Here’s what’s happening. The butter melts super quickly in a too-hot oven before the other ingredients have firmed up into a cookie structure. Therefore, as the butter spreads so does the whole liquidy cookie.
Why Are My Cookies Flat? Mistake: When cookies turn out flat, the bad guy is often butter that is too soft or even melted. This makes cookies spread. The other culprit is too little flour—don’t hold back and make sure you master measuring.
Which is better fan oven or conventional?
The fan oven ensures a faster and homogenous cooking leaving food out fragrant and more humid inside. The static oven, instead, produces a slower and more delicate cooking, ideal for obtaining well cooked and dry even inside dishes.
What type of oven do professional bakers use?
Convection ovens are one of the most common pieces of commercial bakery equipment. They do a great job of quickly and evenly baking a variety of products, from bread loaves to cookies to cakes, pies, and brownies. Their use of internal fans to circulate the air creates even browning and repeatable results.
Why baking at the right temperature is important?
More often than not, controlling the temperature in an oven does more than just ensuring doneness—it can affect the texture and flavour of the dish or baked goods. Generally, a temperature that’s too low makes it harder for your food to be done, and a bitter, burnt taste will emerge in overcooked food.
Which type of oven is best?
Things to look for while buying
| Oven | Wattage | Capacity |
|---|---|---|
| Philips Digital Oven Toaster Grill | 1500-Watt | 25L |
| Bajaj Oven Toaster Grill | 1200-Watt | 16L |
| AGARO GRAND Oven Toaster Grill Convection Cake Baking OTG | Not mentioned | 30L |
| Wonderchef Oven Toaster Griller | 1280-Watt | 19L |
Normally the cookie should not be too flat – should be rounded in the middle, should snap if it’s crispy or bend and break if it’s chewy. If it has nuts, there should be enough of them to have a piece in every bite. The cookies should be big enough to get a good taste of the cookie but not so big that it’s a full meal.
1. Foil does not have any nonstick properties. Baking cookies on foil is pretty much exactly the same as baking directly on a baking sheet. The only difference is that it can save you some clean-up time – you can simply remove and discard your foil without having to wash your baking sheet.