Tips from pastry chefs: How to bake vanilla Christmas cookies?
The dough for vanilla cookies (vanilkové rohlíčky) contains nothing more than flour, butter, sugar and nuts. All the more reason to to concentrate on the quality of the ingredients and follow the procedure which is not complicated, but essential! At least if you want to pull a golden, crisp and moist treat out of the oven - and get nostalgic about the Christmas spirit. We consulted confectioner Lucie Jeníková from Myšák, where they prepare more than half a ton of sweets during Advent.
1. Only smooth!
Vanilla cookies are made from a delicate dough, which includes smoothly ground flour. The fine granulation is more important in this case than the protein content, strength or malleability - it ensures a compact and beautifully smooth dough. By contrast, rolls made from semi-coarse or coarse flour would crumble before baking, but especially afterwards.
The confectioners at Myšák use Italian flour from the Bongiovanni mill, and for Christmas sweets they prefer smooth type 0 flour that doesn't expect any leavening. Czech recipes are used to smooth specialty flour or just plain flour, whether wheat or spelt.
Tip: The dough for rolls will appreciate the grain milled this year! So check the expiry date first.
2. Nuts
In the classic recipe, part of the flour is replaced with walnuts which will take care of the typical aroma, fat, softness and the crispness of the rolls. However, they must be ground finely, otherwise the dough will thicken and crumble. The taste will reflect the quality of the walnuts - the nuts must be thoroughly dried so that they are not bitter. This is also why confectioners keep a close eye on the origin of the raw ingredient! And right after the nuts, they weigh the icing sugar - coarser caster sugar would again disturb the structure of the dough.
(Un)traditionally: Those who don't stick to tradition also mix hazelnuts, almonds or pistachios into the dough. In the past, some (probably poorer) households used to caramelise and grind oatmeal instead.
3. Cold and fresh
The best cookies smell of good fresh butter with at least 82 % fat. This must be left cold, otherwise the dough will 'scald' - the melted butter separates the fat and water, which starts to bind to the flour. The fat then has a hard time binding with the other ingredients, so the dough shrinks, tears and is not cohesive. The robot offers a solution - the cooled butter is whisked briefly to form a crumb that is easily and evenly incorporated into the dough.
4. Quickly and gently
Delicate doughs take a short time to knead! The result is not only influenced by the ratio of ingredients, but also a mixing technique that minimises the formation of a gluten network. Kneading for a long time also melts the butter and can spoil the structure of the dough. It is therefore sufficient to bring the ingredients together to form a cohesive mass. Finally, the dough is wrapped in cling film or a plastic bag and placed in the fridge for a day or two to improve the consistency and taste of the candy.
5. One like the other
When the dough is divided and shaped, the surface should not be floured, as (as you already know) it changes the ratio of ingredients in the recipe and tends to cause the rolls to break and crumble. Perfect shapes are not critical, but size is - similar sized pieces will bake in the same amount of time and it won't happen that part of the tray is done faster and the rest doesn't get baked to perfection.
6. Preheated oven
Before the baking trays (lined with baking paper) are filled with cookies, the oven is preheated to between 150 and 170 °C - depending on the technology. It is worth preheating the oven to a higher temperature before the first batch to test the heat. The aim is for the cookies to be cooked through to the centre without the edges becoming too dark or burnt.
At Myšák, they rely on a convection oven and a temperature of 170 °C, at which the cookies bake in 7 to 8 minutes. The finished rolls are left for a few minutes to rest on the baking sheet and cool slightly, to ensure that they rise nicely and do not break when removed from the baking sheet.
The sugar also affects the texture of the cookie. Together with the starches, it absorbs water and increases the temperature at which the starches gel, hence contributing to the crispness. In some doughs, there is so much sugar that barely half of it dissolves when stirred. The remaining part melts during baking and recrystallises when cooled, so that the initially soft pastry crisps up nicely in the end.
7. Never without vanilla
They are still warmly coated in sugar with real vanilla, which releases an irreplaceable aroma, unlike vanilla sugar. Pastry chefs don't hesitate to make use of the leftover vanilla pod - just seal it in a container of caster sugar for a few days. For more intensity, the two ingredients are blended and sieved. Before coating the rolls, the vanilla sugar is simply mixed with the icing sugar in a 1:4 ratio.
Source: The Pastry Chefs of Mysak, On Food and Cooking Mcgee
