Cookies with different flours

all-purpose flour, bread flour, cake flour

It has been a while since I put chocolate chip cookies on the weekly menu for everyone.  I have multiple types on the full menu, and this upcoming weekend one of them is on the weekly menu again.  These cookies, which I call chocolate chunk grand cookies, are one of my favorites ... obviously, or they wouldn't be on the menu.  After all, as everyone knows, I only cook what I really really like.  Well, these cookies are one of my favorites not just because they taste great and have an insane amount of chocolate in them but also because of something unusual in the ingredients.  They are made with a blend of cake flour and bread flour.  

Bread flour has a high protein content and cake flour a very low protein content.  All-purpose flour falls in between, but closer to bread flour than cake flour.   I find blending flours to be a fascinating experience.  Subtle changes in the ratios of flours can change a product markedly.  So mixing different types, trying different ratios, leaving out some flours (as in the lack of all-purpose flour in the chocolate chunk grand cookies), things like this are interesting to try.  

There are bakers who specialize in breads; just about all they do is bake breads of different types.  Hearing them expound on what different flours (and how they are handled in the mixing and kneading and rising processes) do to different baked goods is always informative and intriguing.  These people work with flours their whole lives and still say they are learning how to use them.  They are the personifications of humility in terms of recognizing what they know and how much more there is potentially to learn.

At any rate, I love making cookies with different types of flours.  The Swedish oatmeal cookies on my menu is another type of cookie that is not made with the usual all-purpose flour; instead, they contain only cake flour.  In both cases, the resulting difference relative to all-purpose flour is significant, at least to me anyway.

Sometimes I think it would be fun to take one thing and experiment with it for a week by varying the flours, trying it dozens of different ways, every day for a whole week, all day long.  However, there are so many other things I want to make that it would be impractical to do so.  But you never know when one day I might just wake up and say it's time to make something ten different ways just to see what happens.