Soft and Chewy Cookies

Good day, hope you are fine. From my experience to get soft and chewy cookies, we need to pay attention in the consistency of the dough. If I can give illustration of cookie dough consistency is similar with brownie dough.  Another parameter which need to considerate is type of wheat flour, you can used medium protein flour which has 10-11% protein its help the cookies texture chewy.  Applied all in method for mixing, its help to control spread and result texture chewy and soft cookies result. Avoid to used creaming method due to it will result crispy and more spread cookies. 

We need to manage temperature and time of the baking, used gradually decreasing of temperature. For example high temperature short time to build the texture then decrease temperature in the last baking time to bake cookies evenly. 

I hope it will help you to solve your problem. Thank you and have a nice day 

Hello, water-binding ingredients, such polyols (glycerol, sorbitol, propylene-glycol,..) and sugar syrups (solutions of sugars, usually reducing sugars or mixtures containing reducing sugars - i.e. inverted sugar, glucose syrup...) are used to make cookies chewy. 

Some polyols are not yet permitted for use in baked products, depending on region. They do not contribute to Maillard reaction, while syrups usually do, but have stronger water-binding properties, at lower concentrations. 

Dear Roel

Chewy cookies depends on the recipe, baking time and thickness of the cookie. Apart from moisture mostly people balance recipe with humectant, some fruit pulps, and nuts and raisins. you can try instead of soda please use baking soda with cream of tartar. Apart from moisture water activity is very important in the final product and your packaging also take important part in keeping the cookie in shelf life.

Balance in the recipe is important. Amount of flour, fat, sugar, emulsifiers and leavening agents. On the other hand, a certain order must be maintained for the addition of the ingredients during the kneading process.

Subsequently, a balanced oven profile must be considered, respecting the formation, drying and coloring stages. The profile of the oven must be smooth, to favor its development and drying, as well as the development of flavor and texture.

Best regards

Omar

Omar , the key in developing a soft type cookie developing a balanced formulation,  final cookie moisture and water activity to achieve your desired shelf life. . 

In regard to the formulation,  most cookies of this type you must manage the amount and types of sugars in your formulation which will give you the trxture you desire. . I would look at ratios or combinations of sucrose and fructose in your formulas to maintain that perceived moistness in your product . You may also want to consider other humectant type ingredients such as raisin paste to improve moisture while providing a texture that is chewy.  As you formulate these cookies you may experience a increase in spread which will need to be managed through the type of flour you use preferably bread type or bleached, cooler dough temperatures and oven profile to control spread and  of oven preferably a convection type to help restrict spread. 

To keep it simple it’s level and ratio of sucrose to fructose in recipe , moisture/ water activity of the final product , and packaging that provides good protection during shelf life 

First of all, you need to bake to a higher moisture than regular cookies so that, upon cooling, the sugar solution becomes a rubbery solid, and not a glassy solid, i.e., the biscuit is chewy.

However this alone is not sufficient because the rubbery solid is supersaturated and has a tendency to separate into a saturated sugar solution and sugar crystals, which dramatically alters the texture and shortens the shelf life. To avoid this is is recommended to replace part of the sucrose by some syrup (invert, glucose, HFCS,...).

These type of cookies tend to be sticky, so you need special care to strip them gently from the steel band. And you may even need a water cooling system for the band and/or greasing at the feed end.