[Sca-cooks] OOP Re: guess the mistake, was RE: Chocolate chip cookies

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Avraham writes:
>On the contrary, most soft/puffy cookies DO rely on baking powder for their
>lift. Thin crisp cookies may leave out the baking powder, and often use
>baking soda instead;

Exactly my point...

>  some few use an ammonium salt (I forget which one -
>ammonium carbonate, perhaps?).

Double-acting baking powder seems to contain calcium phosphate and
sodium aluminum sulfate, in addition to sodium bicarbonate. You may
be thinking of the old recipes calling for "hartshorn", which is not
actually hartshorn at all...

>  For really puffy cookies, use cake flour,
>baking powder (which has more lift than baking soda) and shortening instead
>of butter.

I'm not sure they're cookies anymore if they're _that_ poufy... ;-)
Technically, on its own, baking soda provides no lift at all. I think
it's there more as a tenderizer.

>One wants to AVOID developing the gluten in a cookie batter - it makes the
>cookies tough - unless one LIKES a chewy cookie, in which case, use bread
>flour, melt the butter and use mostly (if not all) brown sugar instead of
>white.
>
>AP flour, less egg, more milk, baking soda, more white than brown sugar, and
>solid butter will result in a thin, crisp cookie.
>
>The above courtesy of Mr. Alton Brown.

Obviously, excess gluten development is a bad thing, but you do need
some, if you plan on picking these things up when they're done. My
point is only that, statistically, the cookie recipes I have seen
that call for baking powder are far outnumbered by those calling for
baking soda, and by those calling for neither. YMMV, which is why I
asked if people found baking powder use to be commonly called for.

Adamantius