Chocolate chip cookies with bread flour?

March 26, 2020 1:21 PM

I can't get white flour, but happen to have a container of bread flour. Does anyone have a favorite (or workable) recipe for chocolate chip cookies using bread flour? As a reference point, in times of white flour abundance, we'd be happily using the Tollhouse recipe.

Please assume that I can follow directions carefully and precisely, but that I have little to no baking intuition myself.

Also, chewy, soft, cakey, or fluffy cookies are good outcomes. Crispy, dense, crumbly or greasy cookies are not.

posted by BlueBlueElectricBlue to Food & Drink (15 answers total)

Best answer: I have made lots of cookies in my time with bread flour because I didn't read a package correctly. For chocolate chip I exclusively use the toll house recipe on the back of the nestle bag. There was no appreciable difference between the cookies I made with bread flour and the cookies I have made when I'm not an idiot at the grocery store.
posted by phunniemee at 1:24 PM on March 26, 2020 [5 favorites]

You can use bread flour just fine in the toll house cookie recipe. They’ll have a bit more body, is all. Unless, by “bread flour” you mean whole wheat flour, then things will be quite different. I notice that you make a distinction between “white flour” and “bread flour.”
posted by Thorzdad at 1:25 PM on March 26, 2020 [3 favorites]

‘Bread flour’ in my experience just means regular white flour but with more gluten, and I agree it’s fine and even perhaps better to use it in toll house cookies, compared to all purpose flour.
posted by SaltySalticid at 1:35 PM on March 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Alton Brown's The Chewy specifically calls for bread flour and it's a recipe I use constantly. Very good. I use more than 12 oz. of chocolate chips, though, because I'm not a monster.
posted by cooker girl at 1:54 PM on March 26, 2020 [15 favorites]

Nthing - In my experience, bread flour just makes a slightly chewier cookie. Go forth and enjoy!
posted by matrixclown at 2:02 PM on March 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: This is the recipe from Tasty that my kids and I prefer. It's very, very good. Half of the flour is bread flour. I'm sure it'd be fine if you used all bread flour. Takes some time to make (gotta let the brown butter cool) but I mean, what else do we have right now but time?
posted by pyjammy at 2:03 PM on March 26, 2020 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Hooray! Baking tonight! (All answers appreciated - marked one of each "distinct" suggestion as best.)
posted by BlueBlueElectricBlue at 2:11 PM on March 26, 2020

Response by poster: (Also, I apparently should have said "I can't get regular all-purpose flour, but have bread flour...")
posted by BlueBlueElectricBlue at 2:13 PM on March 26, 2020

Can confirm that The Chewy is a great recipe! Highly recommend making brown butter first.
posted by radioamy at 2:53 PM on March 26, 2020

You can reduce the gluten content by replacing 1 tbsp per cup of flour with cornstarch if you're worried.
posted by jeather at 5:26 PM on March 26, 2020

You've got your answer, but if you have cake flour, which is low-protein flour, you can blend it with your bread flour and get something closer to AP. What ratios? Hooboy, I dunno.
posted by Sunburnt at 5:49 PM on March 26, 2020

Jacques Torres famous chocolate chip cookies call for equal parts bread flour and cake flour. I've made them a ton of times and they're delicious.
posted by Maisie at 5:53 PM on March 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

Nthing that bread flour is fine, especially if you like soft, chewy cookies (which I do). Other textures may be slightly more difficult to achieve with bread flour than all-purpose.
posted by Aleyn at 9:11 PM on March 26, 2020

A comment in another new thread indicate cake flour mixed with bread flour at 1:1 will get you AP flour.
posted by Sunburnt at 10:22 AM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Just coming back in here to say that the bread flour tollhouse cookies were perfectly great, and not noticeably much different except that they were perhaps a bit easier to bite into on days 2 and 3. Thanks for everything!
posted by BlueBlueElectricBlue at 1:19 PM on April 19, 2020