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of parchment paper, I discovered how the right equipment can make the difference between good cookies and great ones. And, faced with the challenge of baking scores of cookie recipes, one after the other, I was forced to observe the fine points of the genre. What follows is a primer of what I have learned about these sweet little morsels over the years.
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    INGREDIENTS
    Cookies could be thought of as small cakes. Of course, the main difference is, cakes are molded in pans, but most cookies are not. Nonetheless, cookies and cakes share many of the same ingredients. Here is a glossary of common baking ingredients, and suggestions for their use when making cookies.
    FLOUR
    Flour is the backbone of all cookie recipes. Milled from wheat, flour is mostly starch, but also contains proteins. These proteins give structure to baked goods—without them, the cake would collapse. When two of these proteins, gliadin and glutenin, are moistened with water and mixed, they form gluten, an invisible system in the dough. Manipulating the dough strengthens the gluten structure.
    Bread dough is kneaded to create a strong gluten structure for chewy, crusty bread. When it comes to cookies, the batter should be mixed just long enough to incorporate the flour, keeping gluten formation at a minimum to avoid tough cookies. (In some cases, such as madeleines, the flour is only folded in, and not mixed at all.)
    Professionals designate flour as “hard” or “soft,” depending on the amount of potential gluten in the flour. Bread bakers prefer hard flour because their dough must have a strong gluten structure that can withstand kneading, and bake into bread with a crisp crust and chewy texture. Bread flour and unbleached flour are considered hard flours. Cake and pastry flours, with a low gluten content, are considered soft flours.
    A LL-PURPOSE FLOUR is a combination of hard and soft flours. U NBLEACHED ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR has had the hull and bran removed before milling, and it has a relatively high protein content. B LEACHED ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR has been chemically treated to lengthen its shelf life, a process that also reduces the protein. Bleached flour makes for slightly more tender baked goods, but you can use unbleached if you prefer.
    The flour in this book was measured by the dip-and-sweep method (see page 56).
    BUTTER
    There is no substitute for the creamy flavor of butter, and it is also an important building block in cookie dough. Mixing aerates the butter to create air bubbles that are part of the leavening process.
    Butter is available unsalted or salted. Unsalted butter is best because the baker is in control over how much salt will be added to the recipe. Salt was originally added to butter to cover up any off flavors and to improve its shelf life, neither of which is an especially positive improvement.
    When the butter will be creamed, the recipe’s ingredient list instructs to have the butter “at room temperature.” This is a useful phrase, but not entirely accurate, unless your kitchen is exactly 68°F, which is the optimum temperature for beating air into the butter during the creaming process. The butter should stand at room temperature until it has a malleable, almost plastic consistency, with a dull, not shiny, appearance. In general, this takes about 30 minutes for a stick of butter. One of the most common baking mistakes occurs when the butter is too soft, reducing the number of bubbles that can be created and resulting in an under-risen cake.
    If you don’t have the time to let the cold butter stand at room temperature and soften on its own, there are options. Cut the butter into ½-inch cubes and put them in a warm spot near the oven for about 15 minutes (meanwhile you can preheat the oven, assemble the ingredients, and prepare the pan). Or grate the chilled butter on the large holes of a box grater into the mixing bowl. Do not use a microwave, as it is too easy to melt and not soften the butter.
    EGGS
    Eggs moisten the