Chocolate Chip Cookies with Sea Salt, no Nuts

Chocolate chip cookies are comfort food.  Whether you are having a good day or not, they make any day better.  Over the course of my life I think I have made at least ten different recipe versions of chocolate chip cookies.  With each recipe I am convinced that I have found the best one.  Then I come across another recipe, reluctantly try it, and then to my amazement the new recipe becomes my absolute favorite.  The chocolate chip cookie recipes I have made ranged from melting the butter to not melting the butter, from using light brown sugar to dark brown sugar and variations in between, to chilling to not chilling the dough, to adding to leaving out nuts, to using milk chocolate to using dark chocolate, to adding oatmeal or not, to using two eggs to using an egg and one yolk.  Okay, you get the picture.

Now after years of making chocolate chip cookies, I am absolutely convinced that Jacques Torres' chocolate chip cookie recipe really is the best chocolate chip cookie recipe, ever.  It is a phenomenal cookie and hard to believe a cookie this delicious and this beautiful can come out of a home kitchen.  Your family and friends will think you have spent a fortune for them at a bakery.

There are a few things that make this recipe different.  The first is the use of both bread and cake flours. These flours change both the texture and taste of the cookie. Bread flour has a higher protein content and cake flour has a lower gluten content.  The combination of the two brings the best of both baking worlds into one cookie.  All of the dry ingredients are sifted together and then set aside while you mix the other ingredients.  Remember, measure first then sift.

The difference between measuring granulated white sugar and brown sugar is that brown sugar needs to be packed down into the measuring cups.

I like to cut up each stick of butter into about six pieces before adding to the mixing bowl.  It seems to make the creaming process a little easier.  Both sugars and the butter are added to the bowl and mixed with a paddle attachment.

The butters and sugar are mixed until light and fluffy.  This can take up to five minutes. Once the butter and sugars are mixed you add the eggs and vanilla.  The eggs are added one at a time.  After the eggs are incorporated, you add the vanilla extract.  I love the Nielsen-Massey Vanilla and think it is the best vanilla on the market.

After the dough is mixed you add in the dry ingredients and mix slowly for 15-30 seconds or until the dry ingredients are just mixed in.  Then it is time to add the chocolate chips. In Jacques Torres' recipe he calls for the use of a block of bittersweet chocolate that has been chopped.  In case you don't have high quality bittersweet chocolate available to you, I have found that using the Ghiradelli 60% cocoa chocolate chips work perfectly in this recipe. You can use milk chocolate chips for this recipe, but then you would omit the use of the sea salt.

This is one of those chocolate chip cookies where you have to chill the dough for at least 24 hours.  This means some planning ahead is necessary, but just know they are worth the wait.  The dough is covered with plastic wrap. Make sure you press the plastic wrap directly on top of the dough.  This will ensure that the dough does not dry out.

For uniformity of the cookies, I always use an ice cream scoop. To get the golf ball size rounds of dough, I use a 1 3/4 inch ice cream scoop.  Williams-Sonoma has a great selection of ice cream scoops with the ones made my Piazza perfect for making cookies as well as for scooping ice cream.

The second thing that separates these cookies from all others is the use of sea salt.  Yes, the finishing touch on this cookie is a light sprinkle of sea salt.  It is added before you put them in the oven. I very lightly press down on the mound of dough, just enough to take the top round down slightly before sprinkling the sea salt. The combination of the dark chocolate and sea salt in this cookie takes it over the top in taste.

The cookies are baked on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet for 18-20 minutes in the upper third of the oven.  If you bake the cookies in the center of your oven, your cooking time might only be 16 minutes, so I suggest you check the cookies as you bake them.  Not all ovens and not all cookie sheets are created equal, leading to some unintended outcomes.  The cookies are done when they are lightly browned but still looking soft.

Cookies are removed from the hot baking pan and placed on a rack to cool.  Cookies left on a hot baking pan continue to bake even if they are not in the oven. When the cookies have cooled place them on a platter to serve or store in a covered container.

Recipe
Chocolate Chip Cookies with Sea Salt, no Nuts, the Jacques Torres version (a mere suggestion of a change, it is not worth tinkering with perfection)

Ingredients
2 cups with 2 Tablespoons removed of Cake Flour (8 1/2 ounces)
1 2/3 cups bread flour (8 1/2 ounces)
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons Kosher salt
1 1/4 cups (or 2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cups light brown sugar, packed 
1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons sugar (8 ounces)
2 large eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1 1/4 pounds (or two packages) of Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate (at least 60% cocoa) 
Sea salt for topping the unbaked cookies

Directions
1. Take butter out the night before.
2. Sift together the flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt and set aside.
3. Using a mixer with a paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars until very light, about 5 minutes.
4. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
5. Mix in vanilla.
6. Reducing speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined 15-30 seconds.  Do not over mix.
7. Drop in chocolate chips and mix until incorporated throughout.
8. Cover dough with plastic wrap, pressing the plastic wrap against the dough, and refrigerate for 24 hours. (Dough can be used for up to 72 hours of refrigeration.)
9. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
10. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
11. Using a 1 3/4 inch ice cream scoop or scoop mounds of dough the size of golf balls and place onto prepared baking sheet. 
12.  Press dough down oh so lightly, just to flatten the top.
13. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt.
14. Bake in upper top third of oven for 16-18 minutes, or until they are lightly golden but still soft.
15. Transfer to wire rack to let cool.

For a still unknown reason I never went to kindergarten, so the experience of having a milk and cookie snack is not part of my school life memories.  My first memory of eating chocolate chip cookies were tasting a warm Nestle Tollhouse cookie fresh out of the oven.  It seems way back in the 60's the only chocolate chip cookie recipe made in kitchens across the country was the Tollhouse recipe made with margarine and not butter.  Well at least in the kitchen I grew up in margarine was substituted for butter. But as a kid pretty much any warm cookie coming out of the oven was going to taste delicious unless of course they were burnt. Yes there were quite a few burnt cookies made in my house.  Looking back I attribute this to thin cookie sheets and a non-calibrated oven.  

The evolution of the chocolate chip cookie and the proliferation of chocolate chip cookie recipes has made choosing the best one all the more challenging.  Like everything, we all have a personal favorite.  For me, the chocolate chip cookie recipe developed by Jacques Torres takes ordinary ingredients and turns them into a most heavenly cookie, certainly good enough to be food for the Gods and oh, let's not forget the angels.  Oh how I wish these were the cookies from my childhood.