Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Chocolate Chunk Cookies - made dough August 12, 2022 from The Essence of Chocolate by John Scharffenberger and Robert Steinberg

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup bread flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

16 tablespoons unsalted butter

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed

2 large eggs

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

9 ounces 70% bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chip-size chunks

2 1/2 ounces 41% milk chocolate, chopped into chip-size chunks  

1. In a medium bowl, stir together all-purpose flour, bread flour, baking soda and salt.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar on medium speed for about 5 minutes or until pale, light and fluffy. Scrape down the bottom and sides of bowl to keep mixture even textured.
3. Beat in eggs and vanilla, mixing until combined. Reduce the speed to low and add the dry ingredients. Mix until just combined, scraping the sides and bottom of bowl as needed.
4. Fold in chocolate chunks until evenly distributed. Portion dough into golf-ball-size dough balls. Cover and chill or freeze several hours or overnight.
5. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and evenly space dough balls. Bake for 15 minutes or until edges are golden and middles no longer look raw. Let rest on baking sheet for 5 minutes then transfer cookies to wire rack to cool completely.

After baking multiple counts (think in the hundreds, if not thousands) of chocolate chip cookies, and trying out many, many different recipes for them, I put chocolate chip cookie recipes in two categories.

There's the awesome, great, amazing category that make thick, chewy cookies with crisp edges, soft middles, melt-y chocolate chips, a texture you can really sink your teeth into and a brown sugar caramelization only a truly great chocolate chip cookie can deliver. Many of the Crumbl and Levain Bakery copycats I've tried fall into this category as does the most recent one I've tried from Baking with Blondie.

Then there's the other category that I would consider the more basic Nestle Tollhouse-back-of-the-bag recipe type of cookie. It doesn't mean it's bad but, thousands of cookies later, I don't find them to be that special. They're either too thin for my taste or not thick enough. When cool, they taste okay but tend to have a dry mouthfeel, even if not overbaked. 

Unfortunately, this one falls into that latter category. It was okay but nothing special, not thick enough, not brown-sugar-caramelized enough and the texture was, again, "just okay".