The Saddest Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever

First, here is the "picture is worth a thousand words" version of The Saddest Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever:


I should mention a few details as to why I even tried making these. First, chocolate chip cookies are not my favorite. My mom made really great ones when I was growing up, and although the neighbor kids loved them, I liked others. Probably an early indicator that I would one day grow into an obsessive palate was that my favorite cookies were Ghiradelli Chocolate Crinkles. Or snickerdoodles. My mom's cookies really spoiled me. I mean, what kind of 4-year-old does not list chocolate chip cookies as her favorite?

Despite the fact that they are not my favorite, I was craving chocolate chippers, and nothing else would do. So I followed the good ol' Toll House recipe. You can see the disaster. Now, at this point I might have gone to my high altitude cooking guide I downloaded from Whole Foods, which has wonderful, detailed suggestions for altering recipes.

Instead I shunned cookies, and turned to something I've almost never failed at: bread. Baking bread in Denver is a revelation. The altitude and air pressure and dryness combine in a superb way that translates to your bread dough rising in about a half hour as opposed to up to two hours. While this goes somewhat against my slow food, take-your-time tendency, I can't tell you how happy it makes me to throw together a pizza dough when I get home from work on Friday and have it be ready so soon.

Speaking of pizza dough, I've been making it every week, playing with the ratios of white and whole wheat flours. The thing I love about bread is, once you've got the hang of it, you can substitute practically anything and just adjust the amounts by feel. If it's not springy and elastic, you've done something wrong; you just add water and flour until it feels good again. Pizza dough was initially challenging for me; I tried it a few times in San Francisco, but never got the results I wanted.

Enter Alice Waters and her recent bible, The Art of Simple Food. Her pizza dough recipe is the best I've made so far--and, although she calls for an initial 2-hour rise followed by a 1-hour rise, in Denver that translates to a 1-hour rise followed by a half-hour rise. It puffs up wonderfully in the crust but is still chewy--and light. Curiously, it does not call for proofing the yeast with any sugar or honey, which I haven't had success with in the past, but no problems with this one.

If you've never tried your own pizza dough before, this is a good one to start with. It's not too fussy and can be done in a mixer, if you have one. It does take some time, especially if you're not living above 5,000 feet, but it will spoil you off delivery or take-n-bake forever.

High-Altitude Baking Conundrums

I've relocated from San Francisco to Denver. From a cooking standpoint, I am in a different world. The foggy, cool San Francisco air was not conducive to making caramels (they came out like taffy, which led me to think maybe this is how taffy was invented--just another failure to create chewy caramel candy). Bread was difficult. The air was damp literally 365 days a year, as I lived near the ocean.

Enter the Denver kitchen. They have a regular summer here. The air is incredibly dry, save for a few thunderstorms at night. There are, and here is where it gets scary...different instructions for baking at high altitude. Altitude? Ah, yes, I am now living precisely 5,280 feet higher than I've ever lived. On second thought, I was nearly 900 feet in the air when I lived on Twin Peaks in SF.

My first indication that I should use the high-altitude instructions actually occurred in Mammoth Lakes, before we left California. I bought one of those fool-proof brownie mixes that comes in a zipped plastic bag. Wanting to make a moist brownie that was a little lower in fat, I got clever and used applesauce instead of oil. I ignored all mentions of high-altitude in the instructions; not out of defiance, but rather, ignorance. Mammoth is between 7000-8000 feet above sea level. Those of you who live in altitude are probably chuckling to yourselves right now. For other neophytes such as myself, let's just say that the "brownies" were about one half-inch thick and soaking wet. They had to be eaten right out of the pan. In fact, we stored them in the fridge. They were more like really wimpy fudge.

But now I have learned! Or am learning, I guess. I bought a boxed brownie mix here and actually followed the instructions. It wasn't that complicated. Turn the oven down 25 degrees and add 3 tablespoons of flour. If I had to figure it out on my own, I'd say that's because the air is thinner up here, and adding flour incorporates more air into the batter...right?

I also attempted a loaf of bread during my first week here. It was whole-wheat bread, which is always a little dicey for me. It tasted fine, but the texture was off. I didn't see any special instructions on the package. According to the friendly Whole Foods website, I have the following to look forward to if I don't learn quickly: Collapsing cakes, overflowing batters, brittle cookies. Mmm.

An investigation: the following can occur at high altitudes: liquids evaporate more quickly, baked goods rise more easily (hmm, didn't seem to happen with the brownies), batters more likely to stick to the pan. Decreased air pressure seems to be the main culprit, and will also result in leavening agents (baking powder, for example) to be overactive. Once cooking, all the gases have already escaped, which accounts for the brownies. I also found out that foods with high chocolate content tend to burn more easily. Oh, the joy! Nothing will make me depressed more quickly than ruined chocolate.

Now I also saw that temperatures should be raised 20 degrees for cakes and cookies. Are brownies a separate category? Something tells me that navigating this new cooking territory is going to be every bit as difficult as climbing a fourteener (mountains over 14,000 feet tall. Colorado has more of them than any other state. This excites people here. I'm still struggling to play tennis down here at a mere mile high).

Basically, no conclusive answers yet. I'll continue experimenting. Luckily, my oven here cooks at a spot-on temperature, which is more than I can say for most SF ovens I experienced--such as attempting quick breads in my boyfriend's oven there, which cooked at least 50 degrees too hot.

Here's to new culinary adventures!