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.
