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The accepted wisdom is that cookies baked directly on something other than an ungreased baking sheet will burn less. I tend to use parchment paper for my baking, but I wanted to test how much it really matters. In addition to the bare cookie sheet, I had parchment paper and a silicone baking mat, so I got to making the cookies.
Recipe
I put a rack in the middle of the oven and preheated it to 350°F (≈180°C).
| I stirred these: | |||||
| 11¼ | oz | all-purpose flour | 320 | g | |
| 1 | tsp | baking soda | 4.6 | g | |
| 1 | tsp | salt | 6 | g | |
| and then creamed these in my stand mixer bowl (the main work bowl): | |||||
| ½ | cup | unsalted butter, at room temperature | 115 | g | |
| ½ | cup | shortening | 100 | g | |
| ¾ | cup | granulated sugar | ≈150 | g | |
| ¾ | cup | packed brown sugar | ≈165 | g | |
| 1 | tsp | vanilla extract | 4.3 | g | |
| I also prepped: | |||||
| 2 | large | eggs | |||
| 12 | oz | semi-sweet chocolate chips | 340 | g | |
I beat the eggs into the creamed mixture in the work bowl, then stirred in the flour mixture in 3 batches, and finally stirred in the chocolate chips.
I used a disher scoop to drop about a tablespoon of dough onto each baking sheet preparation: parchment paper, silicone mat, and bare baking sheet. I baked each sheet for 10 minutes, and cooled the cookies on cooling racks once the cookies were set.
To prevent the dough from warming up on the counter and confusing the results, I put the cookie dough in the refrigerator between rounds of baking. (I increased the baking time because of the chilled dough; normally I would only bake the cookies for 9 minutes.)
Results
I expected a bigger difference between these 3 methods. The silicone mat browned the cookies a bit less than the other methods – so it can provide a little insurance if you’re afraid of burnt cookies.
I’m going to stick with parchment paper, because it offers one big advantage over the bare sheet and silicone mat:
No clean up.
Filed under baking experiments
Tagged: browning, chocolate, chocolate chip, cookies, parchment, recipe, silpat
Interesting. I always use parchment paper when making cookies, but I do it to decrease clean-up (even “nonstick” baking sheets always seem to cement cookies onto them). I had never considered whether it had a measurable effect on how brown the cookies got on the bottom. Good post!
I like it! I usually use an ungreased cookie sheet on a top rack to keep them a little further away from the heating element so that they cook a little more evenly.
I still go for Silpat, it’s very easy to clean and saves money from wasteful parchment paper that is typically used once and rarely recycled. :)
I hear you about the consumable parchment paper. But I wonder how much soap / water is used in the washing of more dishes?
Silicone doesn’t seem to give the same carmelization as metal/parchment. For some things (pastry/tart shells) that’s okay, for others (cookies), it’s a deal-breaker.
Parchment can handle 2-3 trips into the oven, depending on the butter content of your dough/batter – I find it’s ideal for cookies, since you’re doing multiple back-to-back batches anyway. I’ll use a bit to line the bottoms of cake pans for layer cake as well, since it ensures easy bottom removal (as opposed to sheet cake, when I just serve directly from the cake pan).
Also, parchment also is sometimes a better alternative to aluminum foil in certain cases (frozen-to-oven commercial foods, fish, and other foods that are metal-reactive), so I like to have it around.
I also prefer parchment paper. When baking is completed, it goes directly into my composter, along with egg shells, etc….
I’m a parchment girl. Can’t bake without it anymore. :-)
This was exactly the information I was looking for! I recently moved to east of nowhere, and to get parchment I’d have to drive 30+ miles. My roll ran out and I was wondering what affect it would have on my recipes. I’ll set oven timer for a few minutes less and watch the browning times. Washing a cookie pan isn’t that big of a deal although the easy clean up with parchment is nice.
Being snowed in again, I decided to make cookies. I am not really a baker, but what else am I doing today~ I was curious about this myself and this was the perfect information. I used a Silpat, and for the record- they are super easy to clean~