Mixing the wet and dry

In the last two articles, we developed the wet portion of our cookie dough. Now we’re going to complete the mixing by adding the dry ingredients. The dry goods like flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices will get mixed together and added to the creamed part of the dough.

Flour is a delicate thing, and it needs to be measured carefully. You should stir up the flour in its container, and then spoon it from the container to a dry measuring cup. Don’t heap or pack the flour into the cup. Just spoon it. And when you’ve filled the measuring cup, scrape the top off with a knife to level it. DO NOT scoop the flour directly from the container because this will pack the flour and could add 2 to 3 tablespoons more than the recipe calls for. Now add the measured amount of flour to a large bowl.

Sprinkle the spices, salt and baking powder and/or soda over the flour. Using a whisk, blend the dry ingredients together for at least thirty seconds or more until they are mixed really well. I mean really well. You do this to evenly disperse the leaveners, salt and spices throughout the flour. The more evenly the ingredients are mixed, the more uniform the rise. Since the leaveners give off gases, you want them to be evenly distributed so they give off their gases consistently throughout the dough.

Add half of the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture and give the dough a couple of turns with a flexible spatula. Pulse the mixer on low speed a couple of times and then run on low just until most of the flour is incorporated. Don’t mix too quickly or it’ll go everywhere. This shouldn’t take more than a few of seconds. Repeat with the remaining dry ingredients, mixing only until they disappear into the dough, which will be thick. You can give the dough a couple of turns with a flexible spatula to make certain that all of the dry ingredients are incorporated. Be careful not to beat vigorously or to over mix.

When a recipe instructs you not to over mix, what it means is that you should just do the minimum amount of mixing necessary to make a uniform dough. A good rule of thumb is to stop mixing when no streaks of flour remain in your mixing bowl, or if you’re going to be adding chocolate chips or nuts into your mix, you can stop when a few streaks of flour remain, since you’re going to give the mixture a few extra turns when you stir in the add-ins.

It cannot be stressed enough that this mixing of the dry into the wet ingredients is the most important stage of the entire process of making cookie dough. If you do it wrong, there is no possibility to correct it later.

When the flour is exposed to the liquids in the dough and stirred around, the gluten (protein) in the flour starts to develop into a network that will hold the cookie together, giving the cookie it’s structure. The liquid also activates the gluten in the flour, and the more you stir, the tougher your cookies will be.

Next time we will talk about why we chill the cookie dough before baking.

Today, let’s try a great recipe for peanut butter cookies: