The Effect of Flour Type Used on Spread of Cookies, as Well as Effect of Cooling Cookie Dough and Addition of Solids into Dough on Brittleness of Cookies

When cookies are baked, they could come out in different sizes and textures due to the different variables affecting them. Knowing what variables affect the outcome of the cookies and how they affect the cookies could be useful for bakers and other home bakers when it comes to getting favourable outcomes. The main findings of the project are: Firstly, the more protein is present in the flour used, the less the cookies spread due to the formation of a gluten network in the dough which supports the structure of the cookies. Secondly, cooling of dough before baking leads to less brittle cookies. Finally, adding certain solids to the dough leads to more brittle cookies. Two experiments were conducted as part of this research project. The first experiment was to investigate how the type of flour used, affects the spread by comparing the ratio, which was measured by taking the initial ratio of diameter to thickness of cookie, to the final ratio of diameter to thickness of cookie. In the second experiment, whether the cookie dough was cooled or not and the addition of certain solids into the doughs were the independent variables and we found their effects on brittleness of cookies. The brittleness of the cookies was measured by dropping the cookie, in a box, six times from a height of one metre, and then finding the percentage of the cookie’s mass that is the largest remaining piece after the drop.