How do I speed up the preparation time for chocolate chip cookies?

Question

I've been charged with the task of making 100+ chocolate chip cookies every other day. As it stands, it takes me over 10 hours to do this. I was wondering if anyone had any advice on how to cut down the time for this?

My recipe is here and workflow (with time) is like this:

1. (make) 6x the dough (this takes about 25-30 minutes)
2. let the dough chill in freezer for about 30 minutes
3. preheat oven to 325F (this takes ~ 20 minutes, but I let the oven sit at 325 for another 20 minutes)
4. bring out dough (in parts), measure and compress dough into 56g (~2 oz.) balls (this is the time sink)
5. Once I have 18 balls, I rip them according to the recipe's instructions, place 9 on one cookie sheet, and 9 on another.
6. Bake the cookies for 24 minutes (swap racks and rotate sheets at 12 minute mark), simultaneously "process" more dough.
7. Take cookies out, let sheets cool for another 10 minutes, and put another batch of 18 in the oven.

Since it's clear that I can't make my cookies bake any faster, I think my bottle neck is the "processing" of the dough. I'm okay with getting cookies that are 56g +/- 3g, anyone have any time-tested suggestions?

Answer 1

Preheat while doing other things. That's not a step that should take any effective time.

Don't measure so obsessively. Unless these need to be immaculate cookies, just accept a little variety. Scoop roughly with a spoon, or just your hands, and form into balls with your hands if necessary. If you desperately want precision, you could use a cookie dough scoop. But 56±3g sounds kind of over the top to me. Given that you said this is the main time sink, I'd suggest loosening up a bit.

Are you filling your cookie sheets fully? Do they fill your oven? Following a recipe's instructions to the letter, baking only 9 per sheet, is obviously the wrong thing to do if your cookies or baking sheets aren't the same sizes as those in the recipe. Note also that if you have many cookies per sheet, you can often fit more by tiling in triangles instead of squares.

And finally, reconsider your recipe. I'm sure this one is great, but keep in mind that most standard chocolate chip cookie recipes bake at 350F or 375F, and times more in the 8-12 minute range. If your recipe gives you exactly the cookies you want, and others don't, then stick with it, but if you're unnecessarily sticking to a recipe, try something else.

Edit: one more thought! Chilling the dough is probably important to your recipe, but you could measure/scoop while it's warmer and easier to work with, then chill in balls, and do the final forming once chilled.

And another, having seen your comment: given that you increased the baking time upon filling up the oven more, and are using insulated pans, you might actually want to increase the temperature to 350-375F and see if you can get back down to the 15-18 minute baking time. They may end up closer to the originally-intended consistency!

Answer 2

To speed up measuring, use a long plastic tray or a half pipe to make a cutting mould.
Measure your dough and work out the required distance between cuts, sort of like a builders mitre box.

Stuff the tray with dough and slice through pre-measured cuts. Dump the cut portions onto a tray and chill.

Answer 3

I'm not sure if this is the proper etiquette, but I'd like to compile the results of my experiments. Using inspiration from TFD and Jefromi:

I found that making the dough, and (while the dough was still "warm") using a tea-cup as my impromptu measuring device sped up the whole "56 +/- 3 g" affair. I decided to loosen up my tolerance and measure for large balls that fell within 109 and 114 grams. After I made all the balls, I put them on a wax paper lined tray and let them chill (over-night) in the fridge.

Note: I chose to double the portion, so that when I went to recreate that "jagged" texture as per the instructions in the recipe, I needed only split one large ball in half and then throw both halves on the tray.

When baking time rolled around, I used the triangle tiling suggested by Jefromi to finangle 10 cookies per sheet (whereas before I only got 9). I also experimented with baking at 325F, 350F, and 375F and found that for 14:00 - 16:00 at 375F I got cookies that were sometimes a bit over-done on the edges. If I baked the cookies for 17:00 - 19:00 at 350F I didn't experience that edge problem. I'm sure the edge problem could be remedied by pulling out the bottom tray a bit earlier than the top...

Answer 4

I taught Home Economics for years. Some of our cookies could not be completed during one class period. We made a log of the dough, wrapped it in waxed paper, put it in the frig until the next class period, then sliced the dough just like you would with bought cookie dough. It worked great. Make sure the diameter of the log is going to give you the desired size of cookie you want after baking.