Cut Out Cookies
After nearly 8 years in the high mountain desert of Spokane, there are a few things I still haven’t mastered. One of them is finding the right amount of (less) flour in recipes. I mixed this dough the other day, and I knew, right then, in my heart of hearts, that it was too dry, but somehow I thought some magic might happen to it in the refrigerator.
It did not. I tried to roll it out this morning, and it split and crumbled and cracked.
Michael comes along, as I’m cutting the dough to salvage it into wedges of cookie, and says, “You know what might work great?” and I say, “No. I’m not doing that.” And he says, “I haven’t told you,” to which I reply, “I already know you want to take it into the shop and press it. This never ends well for my cookie sheets.” He’s giddy. He says, “You know you want to know.” I hand him a round of the dough. “Besides,” he follows up, with a glitter in his eye, “I already wrecked* the set of pans I’m going to use.”
Yup. That’s a pretty bad cookie sheet.
You’ll be happy to know that he protected the dough with sheets of parchment paper.
Working to get equal weight distribution — the first round had a high point.
Even better weight distribution!
The presser decided the bits that squeezed out needed eatin’.
Cookie dough, freshly pressed by a 12 ton press.
And presented to the baker, for cutting and baking.
*This refers back to an incident in the late 90s, when he decided to “dry” some pea gravel that he wanted to fill the legs of the doctor’s table he bought to use in his wood shop, so it wouldn’t wobble. He spread the pea gravel out on baking sheets, and set them in the grill. He managed to kill both pans AND a set of professional-grade oven mitts. Confronted with this, he said, “Gravel gets really hot — who knew?”