Why are my cookies crumbling after I bake them?
I make the Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies recipe and swap out the flour for gluten free flour. I'm trying to figure out why the cookies crumbled after I made them. The butter was very soft; could that be the reason, or do I need an additional egg in the recipe because of the flour substitution?
Best Answer
Gluten-free flour is not a perfect substitute for wheat flour. Each mixture out there is designed to mostly work in certain kinds of recipe, but not in all of them. And yes, it is perfectly normal for a gluten-free cookie to be crumbly, since it is the gluten itself that holds wheat cookes together.
I suppose the prepared flour mixture you have is just no good for cookies. Instead of making substitutions in an existing recipe and hoping for a miracle fit, just find a gluten-free cookie recipe (which is likely to use correct proportions of starches and binders, not the unknown mixture you get in the supermarket) and bake that. Troubleshooting substitutions is rarely worth the amount of work you have to invest, and the end result is not the same as without the substitution anyway.
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Quick Answer about "Why are my cookies crumbling after I bake them?"
If you substitute bread flour, which is made from a different strain of wheat and is higher in protein, your cookies will be too hard. If you use cake or pastry flour, which are softer, your cookies will be fragile and crumbly.Why do my cookies crumble after baking?
Overworking = tough, misshapen, and crumbly cookiesOvermixing your dough usually makes cookies tough and shrink into weird shapes, but it can also make them crumbly. Generally you only want to mix just until the flour disappears, and then stop mixing!How do you make cookies less crumbly after baking?
Dry \u2013 \u201cDry\u201d or \u201cCrumbly\u201d dough is a product of over-mixing or using too much of any ingredient during the mixing process. This can be reversed by adding one to two tablespoons of liquid (water, milk or softened butter) to your mix.10 Most Common Cookie Baking Mistakes
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Answer 2
You can't just substitute gluten-free for regular flour. You just can't. Do you have to use gluten-free? If you don't have to use gluten-free, it is best to use regular flour.
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