I have multiple types of chocolate chip cookies in my repertoire. One of the most popular ones is a cookie that uses 3 different types of chocolate and is made with cake flour and bread flour. In the process of experimenting with this cookie over time, I discovered something interesting about the timing of shaping the dough.
When I finish mixing the dough, I immediately place it in a plastic wrap-lined bowl. It will sit in the fridge and chill for at least 24 hours. And when it comes out, it looks like this:
It is one massive chilled ball of dough which must then be cut. I put on knife-resistant gloves to ensure that trying to cut a very dense block of dough with a very sharp knife doesn't result in some very bad cuts.
Once this gigantic dough ball is cut, then it is finally shaped into cookie dough balls that are ready for the oven.
Many cookie doughs are shaped before going into a fridge for chilling, but they don't show much of a difference if they are shaped afterwards instead. But when I tested out shaping before and after chilling for this dough (I do these kinds of process variation experiments all the time with the foods I make as I refine them), I noticed that the cookies that were shaped after chilling had a difference in appearance and texture. The ones shaped after chilling were much nicer.
I find this fascinating. I still haven't figured exactly why this is, although I have a suspicion it is due to how the cake and bread flours are affected by the compaction that occurs during shaping. Most cookie doughs are made with all-purpose flour, so this is a significant difference. And for this cookie, there are lots of jagged chunks of chocolate in the dough, and so the shaping of each dough ball is vigorous, more so than with other doughs only made with chips.
Someday perhaps I will delve more deeply into the science of this. For now, I simply know that the shaping must come after chilling. And that results in an excellent cookie that is one of the most asked-for cookies on my menu.
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