Make Ultra Soft Oatmeal Cookies
The quest for tender cookies always starts the same way—mixing butter, flour, and liquid—and yet can end up differently. Apart from the sometimes dry, crunchy biscuit, the most common unfortunate result is hard and rubbery biscuits due to over-processing of the dough. If you don’t become a grandma from the south, there is a way to minimize the chance of hard cookies, even if you tend to fiddle with the dough for too long. Instead of relying on regular gluten-free flour: make oatmeal cookies instead.
When preparing tender biscuits or any other pastry, we always fight against the formation of gluten. On the contrary, we also need to produce gluten so that the cookie, pie shell or puff pastry can hold its shape and perform other important functions such as holding air pockets and leavening. Bakers usually have difficulty achieving the perfect balance of gluten development. Underwork the dough and it won’t have enough gluten to hold it together at all, making it impossible to shape and even resulting in dry, cracked dough. Overwork the dough and the gluten will become so strong that you will lose the friability, height, and ability to bite into it with your natural teeth.
To formulate a less fussy biscuit recipe, I decided to remove the large percentage of gluten causing all-purpose flour and replace it with oatmeal. This drastically reduces the gluten content by about 87%, which means you don’t have to worry about every stir or do one more time. There are other gluten-free flours, but I prefer oatmeal in this application because it has a texture similar to all-purpose flour, with a very subtle oatmeal flavor and a delightfully bumpy texture. Other gluten-free flours are made from beans or starchy roots, and although they are used in many recipes, they can have an undesirable taste, sticky texture, or require numerous accompanying ingredients. Oatmeal has a 1:1 ratio and you can make it at home by loading old-fashioned oats into a food processor and beating them for two minutes.
Please note that this is not a gluten-free recipe; this is more of a low gluten recipe. If you have a gluten allergy or other gluten restrictions, these cookies may not be for you. However, these cookies are for you if you love oats or if you just can’t stop refining your biscuit dough to the point where you decide to quit. Although oatmeal has better binding properties than many other gluten-free flours, due to its gelatinous starches, it cannot do everything at once. A quarter cup of all-purpose flour is left in the mixture to hold it together with a little cornstarch.
This biscuit dough is prepared in the same way as traditional buttermilk cookies. Mix all dry ingredients in a medium bowl and stir in the chunks of cold butter. Mix the butter as you normally would (break it open, pinch it, use a pastry blender, chop with two knives, use a fork, grate—whatever, I like it) until the butter is the size of a clean shell. edamame or slightly smaller, but not smaller than a pea. Add the buttermilk and stir with a fork or plastic bowl scraper until the mixture sets. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and use your fingertips to roll it out into a ½-inch thick rectangle. Fold it letter-side-in (fold the dough in thirds like the bills you get in the mail) and gently roll it out with a rolling pin until it’s a ¾-inch thick rectangle. Use a disc cutter or knife to make six biscuits. Wash them out of the eggs and bake in a preheated 425°F oven for 15 minutes.
These oatmeal cookies will fill your kitchen with a toasted flavor that most people can’t catch. Not exactly oatmeal or muesli, the smell of oats and butter has a caramelized, nutty flavor. The finished cookies are so tender that only a little effort is needed to separate the browned layer. These cookies are savory because I like the egg on top option, but you can add a tablespoon of sugar to the dry ingredients if you like a slightly sweet cookie. For a cozy fall breakfast, brush these little ones with a compound oil of cinnamon, honey, and a little salt.
Soft oatmeal cookies
Ingredients:
- 1 ¾ cups oatmeal
- ¼ cup all-purpose flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons cornstarch
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 pack of cold butter (4 oz)
- 4 oz buttermilk
- Egg for washing (optional)
Preheat oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a medium bowl, mix the first six ingredients. Cut into pieces of cold butter into the dry mixture. Use your fingers or any other tool to pinch off and beat the butter into a dry mixture until pieces of butter are the size of unpeeled edamame beans and no smaller than peas. Add the buttermilk and use a fork to mix it in until it’s mostly smooth and there’s a lot of dry mixture on the bottom.
Lightly flour the countertop and place the biscuit dough on a floured surface. Gather the dough together with your fingertips to pick up any dry bits that have tried to escape. Roll out the dough into a ½ inch thick rectangle. Make a letter fold to make three layers of dough. Use a rolling pin to gently roll out the dough, keeping a rectangular shape, until it is about ¾ inch thick. Using a round cookie cutter or a square cutter, cut out six cookies. Depending on how you like to bake your cookies, lay them out with or without scraps on a lined baking sheet. Wash the egg only on the top of the dough (do not let it run down the sides).
Bake in the oven at 425°F for 15 minutes. The cookies will be golden brown on top and soft but firm. Enjoy hot or at room temperature with butter and honey or sausage sauce . These cookies are frozen, well wrapped, for up to three months. To spice them up, roast them in the oven at 350°F for 5-10 minutes.