A MUST-BAKE-OR-I-WILL-GO-CRAZY weekend: Alton Brown's "The Chewy," Butterscotch Chocolate Chip Cookies, and No-Knead Pizza!

You know, one of those days.

Where even though you have "more important" things to do (i.e. an application for research funding due by midnight the next day), baking seems infinitely more urgent, and important to your mental health. And you realize you have some pantry cleaning to do.

On Sunday, I really wanted a chocolate chip cookie. And while flipping through a few cookie books and finding more chocolate chip cookie variations of interest, I was reminded that 1) I haven't in recent memory given either AB's CCC or the NYTimes CCC a try, and 2) I have some bread flour I really need to start getting rid of.

Alton Brown's The Chewy: up close and personal

The premise of Alton Brown's The Chewy cookie (and the NYTimes-featured cookie, although I didn't make that recipe this time) is that since bread flour has a higher percentage of protein (gluten) in the flour, the moisture you give it (in the form of water from melted butter) and the time you let it rest to allows the gluten to slurp up the moisture and develop. Fully developed gluten is chewy, similar to what you think of in a good artisan bread. The NYTimes cookie also has a bit of cake flour to balance out the texture and deliver the fine crumb-texture we all associate with cookies. Alton Brown goes for the gusto and uses only bread flour.

The Chewy's dough came out somewhat stiff, and after chilling, almost dry and crumbly, but they baked fine and the resulting texture is chewy and soft. You can find the recipe here at the Food Network site. I noticed a couple reviews that said to make sure to really pack down your brown sugar so you have enough sugar in the recipe to make it sweet enough and not end up with dry, cakey cookies. Reading that, I think the relative dryness of my dough may be in part due to not packing down the sugar enough. I also browned the butter to give the cookies a little more flavor, and since one always loses a little bit of volume from browning, I probably should have over-compensated and put in a little extra butter to account for the loss of moisture during the cooking process.

Overall, though, a big thumbs up from taste testers at home and at work.

A troupe of Butterscotch Chocolate Pecan Cookies.

While The Chewy dough was chilling in the fridge, I whipped up this recipe for Crinkly Butterscotch Pecan Cookies I found on Cookie Madness. They looked really good, I loved the idea of poking the edges of the cookies when they first come out of the oven to really encourage crinkling, and I have a tub of no-trans-fat Crisco to use up. It was a win-win situation that ended deliciously. I substituted half the butterscotch chips for 60% cacao chocolate chips that I chopped into slightly smaller chunks. I think the dark chocolate worked really well to balance out the sweet butterscotch, and the shortening gave the edges of the cookie an addictive crispy sandiness. Really, really delicious, and I'm so excited I have some dough in the freezer for a quick mini-batch anytime I want. MUA HAHAHAHA...

So many cute crinkles!

And lastly, I finally gave the No-Knead dough a try, after talking it up for weeks. I used this recipe from Jaden of Steamy Kitchen, which is originally from the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

Just-mixed dough.

You literally throw all the ingredients into a bowl, mix with a spoon, let it hang out for awhile, and then throw it in the fridge or use immediately. Since I knew I was going to let some of the dough hang out in the fridge for days, I decreased the amount of yeast I used as suggested by Jaden. I used about 1 tablespoon of yeast.

I let it incubate close to the heater for 2 hours, turning every once in awhile, and then threw the whole thing into the fridge. We used some of the dough about 3 hours later for pizza for dinner, and basically I ripped a chunk off, threw it in a bowl with some olive oil and let it come up to room temperature. Then we liberally floured a heavier cookie sheet, stretched out the dough into a rough rectangle, sprinkled our toppings, and baked at ~425 for 10-15 minutes. The crust didn't brown enough by the time the ingredients were toasty, so for the future, I'd probably pre-bake the dough for about 5 minutes and/or brush the crust with a bit of oil. The crust was cooked enough, just didn't look pretty and brown.

How did it taste? Really, really good. The edges and bottom of the pizza were crispy, and the inside of the crust was springy/stretchy and chewy and substantial. The flavor was also really good without being yeasty.

And we've got more dough to use up at a later time! I'll post pictures of the 2nd round, especially if I can get a prettier crust.

After a 2-hour nap in front of the heater.

So, end result: 3 successful, yummy recipes. 0% schoolwork done.

Win?

For our tummies, yes.