I know that you are all dying to know more about the Cookies of Science™. I tried some blind taste testing but that didn't work out as well as one might think. As mimsy pointed out the perfect chocolate chip cookie is a matter of taste, so different people liked different things. That said, there were definitely differences between the doughs.

First, between the plain and vacuum packed dough there was only a slight difference. They looked the same and tasted the same. The only difference that I saw was that the vacuum packed cookie seemed to fall apart in your mouth a little more readily.

As for the rested dough, there were some marked differences. Firstly I only baked those for 12 minutes instead of 13. I think that I should have held out for 13 since the time difference changed the texture of the cookie pretty dramatically. They were more moist, more buttery. They tended to leave an oily spot on the napkin where you set them down. The odd thing is that they were more golden brown than the regular dough, even though they were baked for less time.

Also the cookies baked 36 hours before were of course drier than the fresh cookies. This had a definite effect on the testers.

My conclusions thus far:

1) The sea salt on top of the cookie is a stroke of genius
2) Rested dough browns quicker

More research is called for. I'd like to mix a batch and rest it, then 36 hours later mix another batch and bake them together. If I can stick to the recipe the doughs should be pretty similar.

It's really amazing that you can bake such different cookies from a single dough. Most tasters saw differences between even the basic and vacuum packed cookies and were a little skeptical of my assurances that they were from the same batter.

Today I stumbled on an article about making a better chocolate chip cookie which was linked from a blog entry about how to perhaps attain the same effect but in a shorter time. As the chocolate chip cookie is one of the greatest inventions of the modern world I was definitely intrigued. Reading the post at Ideas In Food however I was disappointed that the author didn't maintain a control sample during his experiment. There are so many variables in the baking of a chocolate chip cookie that it can be difficult to determine what changes had how much of an effect. Could vacuum sealing the cookie dough in a plastic bag have an effect on the cookie dough? Would it aid in the rate of hydration of the flour grains? The world must know!

I decided to use Science™ to find out.

I made up a batch of my favorite chocolate chip cookie dough. I split the batch into 3 more or less equal portions. One portion was placed into a glass bowl and covered with plastic cling wrap. The second portion was vacuum sealed in a plastic bag with a consumer grade vacuum sealer. The third portion was left in the mixing bowl, covered with plastic cling wrap (this is my control). All three portions were placed in the fridge.

Three hours later I removed the vacuum sealed and control portions. I portioned the cookies out using a #20 disher on identical room temperature half sheet pans lined with parchment. Each cookie was sprinkled with a small amount of course sea salt. I baked each pan for 13 minutes at 375º F. I allowed the cookies to cool for about 30-45 minutes.

Willing test subject 1 (crankygirlie) tried both cookies and found the control to taste better, but detected a definite texture difference in the two samples.

It should be noted that I have identified an potential difficulty in preventing test subject 1 from exhausting the supply of test cookies. Hopefully I will be able to prevent such a catastrophe before completion of the experiment.

Should we make it to Friday with sufficient supply in hand I intend to conduct blind taste tests with more willing test subjects. Applications are now being accepted.