Swap 2 Chocolate Chip Cookie Ingredients Out For A Better Bite (Thanks, Alton Brown)

We love Alton Brown's recipe for chocolate chip cookies. It's his play on the famous Nestlé recipe that comes on their bags of chocolate chips, with two big changes that you can use in any chocolate chip cookie recipe to create the perfect bite: swapping all-purpose flour with bread flour, and replacing the chocolate chips with broken up chunks of dark chocolate.

The purpose of the bread flour is to give the cookies a chewier bite. There are many different types of flour with different uses – bread flour being one of the highest in protein. Typically containing 12 to 14%, bread flour forms more gluten than all-purpose flour does, giving the cookie more structure and thickness. The protein literally makes the dough stronger, which leads to more chew.

For the chocolate, Brown recommends using something the range of 68% cocoa. This dark chocolate will be less sweet and creamy than a typical chip with a purer chocolate taste, pairing well with the chewy cookie surrounding it. Plus, because it doesn't contain stabilizers, baking chocolate melts more than chocolate chips. Altogether, the broken chunks create larger dollops of gooey, pleasingly intense dark chocolate studded throughout the cookie.

Of course a chef like Alton Brown, with a passion for the science behind recipes, doesn't stop there. He plays around with the classic, Nestlé chocolate chip recipe with other swaps like replacing one egg white with milk. Instead of the two large eggs used in the original, Brown uses one large egg, one egg yolk, and two tablespoons of whole milk. He also melts the butter instead of just softening it. 

Replacing one egg white with whole milk adds more sweetness, as egg whites are largely composed of protein and water while the whole milk adds some fat and lactose. The result is a more tender and rich treat. Completely melting the butter as opposed to just softening it results in a denser cookie, making it more chewy and fudge-like. But Alton Brown isn't the only chef with some great tips — check out the ways other celebrity chefs upgrade their cookies to help you in your quest.