I want to learn more about these 48 hour chocolate chip cookies
Simple way, make your preferred dough and then stash it in the fridge for a few days. Even just a few hours can make a difference, gives time for flour to hydrate at the minimum, longer is better for flavour.
Applicable to almost any baked good too, bread/pizza benefits from long, slow ferments, get some complexity of flavour + can help with the dough’s structure. Sour dough kinda forces you into these long fermentation periods, I tend to use a preferment (like a biga or poolish) when I’ll use bakers yeast.
Also can be convenient if you’re busy, it’s quick to mix things together, let the dough do the hard work for you.
These are pretty amazing
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/supersized-super-soft-chocolate-chip-cookies-recipe
Most things by King Arthur flour are good! I like the Cornish pasty dough recipe they have!
If you ever get a chance, visit the King Arthur headquarters in Vermont. They have a calendar of baking workshops and training courses that are top-notch. The on-site bakery has breads, sandwiches, cakes, cookies, and even pizza dough.
I know! One day I will, but currently complete lack of money. Until then I will be happy knowing they’re employee owned and stuff.
Truth. I feel silly having brand loyalty to a flour brand, but I do. I think King Arthur puts out fresher, better flour, and I think their recipes and website are super solid. Legitimately a fan of a flour brand, lol.
Not silly! The flour is very exactly what it says, which is super helpful for certain very finicky foods! I know there’s a cookie I make sometimes that can get weird on some flours, it never ever fails to work on King Arthur! (I’m sure it would work on other brands though like I’ve heard good about Red Mill?)
Hence why beta 1.7.3 minecraft is such a gem. It’s the last major version that understands that the game is meant to be played slowly.
Alpha is even better because it doesn’t have beds, which low-key ruined the game…
Agreed. It completely destroys any challenge of surviving.
Shameless sloth propaganda
Upvote
I didn’t get a slow cooker until I was an adult, and it was a life changer. I love a recipe that consists of “ingredients, plus 6-8 hours.”
It’s nice to put ingredients into it, leave/sleep/something and come back to food!!! I love it. Mine died recently, I was very sad.
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I love my Le Creuset dutch oven. It’s just like you said (ingredients + 6-8 hours) but I add a stovetop browning step at the beginning followed by a deglaze, then add the ingredients, lid on, and into the low oven until fork tender!
I’ve got a Staub Dutch oven and it’s my favourite kitchen piece I own, closely followed by my stainless steel skillet. Honestly if I lost all my pots and pans and had to start from scratch I’d buy those two right away and just coast for a while. Maybe a medium sauce pan for boiling stuff but that would be enough for a while. I do really enjoy cooking though so I’d eventually want to get all the stuff back, but I could survive and eat good food with just that.
Have you tried baking bread in your Dutch oven? I mostly use mine for braises and potroasts but it does work for bread too which is quite wild!
I never got much into baking, that’s more my wife’s thing. I might try bread in the Dutch oven, or see if my wife wants to give it a try. An ex-coworker has recently gotten really into baking sourdough bread in a Dutch oven and I’ve seen pictures, they look awesome. I prefer sourdough anyway so I might go for that one.
Yeah sourdough is the way to go if you really get into baking bread. It’s a lot more finicky and tricky to learn though, plus it’s a commitment to keep a starter going.
Wow these beans are amazing, what’s your secret?
I forgot about them
Mostly meh, but those long time cookies are amazing.
Just letting regular recipes sit in the fridge a few hours is a big shift in texture and taste that are beneficial to most palates. Obviously, preferences vary and there’s no single “best” anything food wise, but you can get significant changes in intensity and depth of flavor with the long recipes
Tell us your wisdom oh Baker of the Mountain. Do you just use the same recipe or is it modified somehow to benefit from the dwell time? Best type of cookie for this treatment? Teach me something new that’s not another reason to be depressed please.
Yeah, it can be done with any recipe usually. It does benefit when you start with more complex flavors to begin with, but even the most basic tollhouse recipe gets changed over time just by chilling.
Basically, it lets the flour fully hydrate, and the enzymes present break down sugars. You end up with layers of flavor as you eat each cookie.
There is an upper limit to how long a given recipe can go, but the “48 hour” label kinda dials in the sweet spot for most.
The absolute best cookie recipe I’ve seen that makes the best use of the method is Any version of Levain style cookies. That particular recipe is real forgiving, and they actually give a little info on what’s going on. I’ve had them stay in the fridge for a week a couple of times, and be just as good as on day 2 or 3. IIRC, they specify overnight for the rest period, but unless you’re getting started at dawn of the first day, you’ll want to give them at least 36 hours in the fridge.
The exception is recipes meant to be thin and crispy. They don’t benefit at all, and you end up losing some crispness by trying.
I’ve done pretty much every standard cookie type with the long rest, and with the possible exception of snickerdoodles, you’ll see some difference in outcome that most people enjoy. Peanut butter cookies do great with it. So do the reddit-famous murder cookies. Chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, I find I really notice more enjoyable flavors. Sugar cookies, and butter cookies, I’m on the fence with because you get a bit more chew, so the shift in complexity is kind of a side grade.
Just wanna say thanks for sharing this baking tip. It’s so interesting that chilling the dough can make such a difference. I gotta try it some day.
No worries :)
As a side note, serious eats did a whole test run of options for cookies. Don’t have the link handy, but they went through various factors like type of sweetener, leavening, etc and showed what changes each makes. It’s possible to tweak any given recipe to adjust for desired results once you get that internalized.
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Tbh, if I can’t get them right, I’d rather have chewy than that half-ass crumbly texture too.
Sugar cookies need to be crisp, crystalline, not crumbly. The problem is that it’s all about getting that sugar/fat ratio perfect with the flour, and that’s hard to pull off since flour hydration varies based on environmental factors.
They’re one of those super basic kind of baked good that is so hard to really nail that it could be a test. It’s like omelettes; you have to really have your techniques and knowledge nailed down tight to make them great, and they’re easy to screw up.
But damn, when they do come out perfect, and they almost dissolve on the tongue leaving behind that buttery goodness, it’s a bit of magic. Not my favorite cookies by a mile, but still.
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I wish I could pretend to get them perfect every time, but I kinda cap out at 7/10. I’ve gotten to the point where the edges are always great, but nailing the centers isn’t as reliable.
My omelette game is amazing though! Been working on that since I was a kid. Don’t ask about the poached eggs though lol.
This recipe is pretty close to the one I use; I haven’t gotten around to digitizing some of my older recipes out of laziness.
One of the biggest factors in getting the centers crispy is the thickness factor though. After I’ve got them cut, I take a cocktail or highball glass, dip the bottom into sugar and gently flatten them a little more. Not enough the edges split, but just before they would.
If the flour is running a little more moist, I’ll decrease the amount of egg a touch by separating the yolk and decreasing it by half-ish. It’s one of those things that’s by feel though, I’ve yet to figure out a way to turn it into a precise measure because it’s all about his the flour feels before and during mixing. The difference is minor, but it seems to be the limiting factor in making sure the centers are crispy rather than crunchy or chewy.
You need to turn off your grindcore and listen to some progressive doom metal.
Just listen to sleep and you’ll be good to go.
I actually did listen to doom metal to fall asleep when I was a teenager. Good times…
There’s a band that I forgot the name of… I saw them live and they probably played 3 songs in total. It was sooo slow. It was fantastic!
Bell Witch is like this. Their album Mirror Reaper is technically one “song.”
4 day fridge fermented pizza dough
3 day air drying jerky after a 3 day marinade.
I’m down with that.
But cleaning still needs to be 90mph because I’m gonna get bored and give up.
It already takes me 15 minutes to brew about 10 cups of coffee for myself.
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Too poor, I’m either working or dying
slowmaxxxing is a privilege
nothatscrazyineedtobefast
I got the 15 minute coffee down at least. I’m one of those coffee snobs, hand a Hario pour over and a French press, and use a gooseneck kettle. There’s no rushing a good coffee. I make myself about 20 oz twice a day. First thing before work, and again on my lunch break.
That sounds fantastic!
I’m a coffee scrub. What I make tastes great, but only because I add stuff to it. I use a cheap-ass espresso machine, pull three shots worth, pour it over some ice, add some benefiber (flavorless powder, just adds fiber to stuff) and some flavoring (right now I’m rocking an horchata mix), then some oatmilk, then shake to mix it.
This doesn’t take 15 minutes, but it takes a lot longer than it should because I’m usually making breakfast at the same time. The ritual is quite relaxing though.
If you enjoy it, that’s all that matters. I’m a snob over my coffee, but also a big advocate that if you’re not hurting anyone, do whatever you like.
For me, I prefer a simple coffee. Starting with good beans (mostly African: Ethiopian, Kenya AA, Congo Kivu. I dunno what’s in the soil but African beans are better than anything else I’ve had. Costs Rican beans are pretty good too), the Ethiopian Sidamo Guji region is my favorite). Always light roast. Lightly sweetened with a touch of milk for creaminess.
Closest I’ve come to enjoying “fancy” coffee is an Americano with milk. Not big on straight espresso, nor anything that ends in -chino (cappu, frappu, etc).
If you are ever interested in some good beans, check out S&W Craft Roasting for really good stuff. For a budget brew, I go with Fresh Roasted Coffee (they have a website and an Amazon storefront).
This sounds chill but are there actual evidence that taking it this slow improves your (mental?) health significantly?
My personal experience tends to agree.
Mine absolutely disagrees. After years (pandemic) of trying to be deliberate and slow, my mind has slowed down and doing anything quickly and efficiently is more challenging.
Live slow, die old!
My boss disagrees with this.
Smoked some bacon the other day. Took 8 hours after a week of curing the bacon. There’s not a moment I regretted from any of that time spent, and the bacon is delicious.
Poor pig :(
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