Don't crowd the cookie dough balls

Baking, cooking, proofing bread dough, anything done in the kitchen has so many subtleties.  

Over the past few weeks, I've made a number of cookies including snickerdoodles.  And the cooking of the snickerdoodles illustrates one of those subtleties.

In the photo above, I have spaced 6 chilled snickerdoodle balls, slightly flattened, on a baking sheet.  When they are spaced in this way, they come out looking as they appear on the cooling racks in this photo, slightly thick with edges that hold and define the cookie.

However, if instead of 6, I place 8 on the baking sheet, with the other two placed in the centers of the squares created by the placement above, the cookies spread more, coming out flatter.

Since the cookie dough is chilled, the placement density is crucial.  If there are too many dough balls on the tray, that cools the tray down and makes it take longer to heat up which in turn means that as the heat of the oven affects the dough on the top, the same effect on the bottom takes longer since the tray has to absorb more heat to counteract the chill of the extra dough balls.  Additionally, around each dough ball is a little pocket of cold air.  More dough balls means more cold air.  It's not much, but it's enough to, in combination with the colder tray as just mentioned, allow the cookie to spread more before the edges cook enough to firm up and hold the cookie into it's shape.  Too many dough balls, flatter cookies, less chewy, larger.  Just the right amount, slightly thicker cookies, a little smaller and a crisper outside to with a chewier inside.

At least that's my theory, a theory that has evolved from evidence over countless bakes over many years.

A well-known chef once said, "Don't crowd the mushrooms."  So we will paraphrase that here to say, "Don't crowd the cookie dough balls!"