The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies You’ll Ever Make (Bakery-Quality)

I'm Lish Steiling.

I'm a professional chef,

and today I'm gonna show you

how to make bakery-quality cookies at home.

Today, we're baking decadent, crispy on the edges,

soft and gooey in the center,

chocolate chip cookies.

This is Chocolate Chip Cookies 101.

This cookie has a slightly crispy edge

where it's almost a little caramelized in texture,

and the middle stays nice and soft.

These cookies actually come together

as a dough much faster than a normal cookie,

but it does have to be refrigerated

or frozen for about an hour before baking,

and it makes a huge difference.

It lets the dough hydrate.

It just lets all the flavors marry and meld,

so it yields a really good bakery cookie.

[upbeat music]

I'm gonna start by mixing together the dry ingredients.

I'm using bread flour here,

385 grams of it.

I prefer bread flour for these cookies

because it guarantees a softer, chewier center.

So I'm using a scale just because weighing

is the most accurate method

of getting this consistent cookie every time you bake.

There's a lot less room for error,

and you get a bakery-style cookie that's reliable.

So I have baking powder and baking soda here,

and they're both three grams.

So we use both leavening agents in here

because they both do different things.

Both are leaveners,

but the baking powder also helps tenderize the cookies,

so that you get that nice crumb.

You want them to be evenly distributed

throughout the dry ingredients

because God forbid there's a pocket of baking powder

or baking soda in a cookie.

And then the four grams of kosher salt go in,

and that's your dry ingredients.

I'm starting with 226 grams of butter.

I actually start with all of my ingredients cold.

When you start with cold butter,

you get layers of, pockets of like steam,

like pie dough or croissant dough, right?

So you get this like layered effect.

I'm just gonna schmear it around.

I'm not trying to cream it.

Like, really quick.

So I'm just schmearing the butter here,

and right there.

You can see it's loosened up a little bit,

but it's not actually whipped.

You're not getting air into it.

That was like 15 seconds,

and that's all that it takes.

Onto sugars.

We have 200 grams of light brown sugar here.

Light brown adds sweetness,

but also softness in the cookie,

all relating back to that tender center,

and 145 for granulated sugar.

It's a nice balance of flavors.

The brown sugar making them a little bit softer.

You also add that undertone of molasses,

so they both have their roles,

just adding sweetness or adding more character,

and tenderizing,

and making it delicious.

You're just gonna schmear it together.

You don't actually wanna cream it.

[mixer whirring]

Right about there.

I don't wanna overmix it

'cause I wanna keep that butter cold.

So the texture right now,

you can see it's almost like the butter

is just coated in the sugar.

That's what we're looking for.

So we have eggs.

Gonna crack into a bowl,

so that we make sure that there's no shell.

Two eggs.

10 grams of pure vanilla extract.

At this point, it's actually gonna look kind of separated

and broken,

but just trust the process.

[Lish laughing]

[mixer whirring]

You can see there's still a little bit of butter in there.

It's kind of broken a little bit.

Looks a little separated, if you will.

That's okay.

It's gonna come together now.

All of the dry ingredients are in at once,

so just very slow,

bring it together.

You're gonna just beat it until it just comes together.

There should still be a few streaks of flour in it.

If you overdevelop the gluten, you'll get a tough cookie.

Nobody wants a tough cookie.

There's still a little bit of flour visible,

but that's okay,

because we are now going to add our chocolate.

We have two kinds of chocolate,

145 grams of bittersweet chocolate

and 140 grams of semisweet chocolate.

You can use milk chocolate,

you can use white chocolate,

whatever kind you want.

I love the hand chop.

I think that it gives you pockets

of oozy, melted chocolate.

Gives you little shards of chocolate

and specks of chocolate throughout the cookie.

You could absolutely use chocolate chips in this.

My suggestion would be to hand chop about half of the chips,

so that you get some of those little shards.

This is what it looks like

when it actually all comes together.

It's now cohesive,

but there are still little specks of butter,

and all of that chocolate is distributed in.

So the key here is, again, not to overmix the dough

because you want those little specks of butter in there.

You don't want it creamed

and distributed throughout

where it's gonna be a little melty.

This looks perfect.

So we're ready to weigh our cookie.

We're gonna go for about 120 grams per cookie.

So these are big cookies.

This is similar to Levain style,

not quite as biscuit-y.

I am using a 1/2 cup measure here

because it's about the size of what the cookie will be.

You can do it by hand.

I just prefer not to use a scoop.

A scoop makes it almost too perfect, right?

You're gonna have the perfect round cookie.

I like perfectly imperfect.

So here are our 120 gram cookies all weighed out.

Popping them in the freezer for about an hour

because I want the dough to rest and absorb,

and let all the flavors marry,

but also so that they don't bake too quickly

when you put them in the oven.

The outside will be slightly frozen,

so they'll keep a little bit of their texture

and their height,

exactly what we want.

[upbeat music]

These cookies are fresh out of the freezer,

nice and cold and firm.

Now, they're going in the oven,

375 for about 19 minutes.

You wanna rotate them halfway through.

Keep an eye on 'em.

Might go a little bit longer or a little bit less,

but 19 tends to be the sweet spot.

Let's go.

[upbeat music]

Warm cookies.

I like to give 'em a little smack,

just 'cause it settles them

and kind of encourages those little craggly bits.

These were in for about 19 minutes.

I rotated them halfway through.

So you've gotta take a look at this, right?

All of the craggly bits,

these edges, they're not perfect.

It's still a round cookie.

Don't get me wrong.

But it has all these little crispy bits,

and the characters of the peaks and valleys on the top.

We're gonna try to let these rest for 10 minutes on the tray

and then move them to a wire rack.

These cookies, in particular, I tend to remove

when the center still looks slightly underbaked.

You can tell just by pressing on it.

It should be pretty much set around the edges,

but still a little soft in the middle,

and that's exactly where these are.

If the center is completely loose, where it's liquid molten,

that's a little too underdone,

but a little slightly under is good in this case.

You can really tell just by looking at it if it's underdone.

You'll see a difference in the finish of the cookie.

It will be more glossy in the very underdone part

versus matte where it's baked.

I'm moving them over to a wire rack to cool completely

because at this point,

they've now carried over as much as I want them to

on the warm tray,

and now I want them to just completely cool

without any residual heat.

I think it's time to taste.

Let's see what we have here.

Ooh, chocolatey goodness.

Look at that.

Should I take a bite? I think so.

[upbeat music]

Soft in the middle.

Crunchy on the outside.

Look at that chocolate.

Look at those pockets.

Don't you just wanna eat the whole tray?

This cookie is so worth making it at home.

It's warm chocolate chip cookies whenever you want.

You can freeze them individually.

Bake off one or two.

Fresh whenever you want it.

You're in control for a delicious chocolate chip cookie.