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From the Oven
From the Oven · No. IV · Every Season

Bakery-Style Chocolate Chip Cookies

Brown butter, two kinds of chocolate, and a dough that's better for the wait.

Makes18 large cookies
Oven375°F
Time12 minutes, after the chill
Three chocolate chip cookies on a floral-rimmed plate, seen from above
Three down, fifteen to go

The butter is the part I look forward to. It foams, then quiets, then turns the color of maple syrup and smells like toffee — the whole downstairs knows what's coming before the first cookie is anywhere near the oven. Then comes the part nobody enjoys: the dough goes into the refrigerator, and you walk away. Two hours if you must. A full day if you can stand it. The flavor deepens overnight in a way no shortcut has ever matched.

The chew comes from bread flour. The melty pools come from chopping the chocolate instead of pouring it from a bag. The rest comes from patience, which this recipe asks for twice and repays both times.

Ingredients

The brown butter

The dry

The wet

The chocolate

Chopped chocolate melts into pools; chips hold their shape. Using both gives you the best of each in the same bite.

Method
  1. Brown the butter: melt it in a light-colored pan over medium heat, swirling now and then, until the foam settles and the solids at the bottom turn amber and smell nutty. Pour it into a large bowl, scraping in every browned bit, and let it cool until just warm.
  2. Whisk together the bread flour, all-purpose flour, baking soda, baking powder, cornstarch, and kosher salt.
  3. Mix the warm brown butter with both sugars until smooth.
  4. Beat in the egg, the yolk, and the vanilla.
  5. Fold in the dry ingredients just until no streaks of flour remain.
  6. Fold in the chocolate.
  7. Cover and chill the dough at least 2 hours. Twenty-four is best.
  8. Heat the oven to 375°F. Scoop the dough in 3–4 tablespoon mounds onto lined baking sheets, leaving room between them.
  9. Bake 11–13 minutes, until the edges are golden and the centers still look slightly underdone. Finish with flaky salt while warm, if you like, and let them cool on the pan a full 10 minutes — they set as they rest.
Chocolate chip cookies on a floral plate beside a linen napkin
Set out for the afternoon

The dough keeps in the refrigerator for three days — or scoop it and freeze the mounds, and bake one or two straight from frozen, a minute or two longer. A warm cookie is then never more than fifteen minutes away.

"The centers should worry you a little when they come out of the oven. Ten minutes on the pan, and they'll have sorted themselves out. Most things do."