Baking is a hobby that many people enjoy. It can help release stress and boost creativity. When you are done baking, you can give the treats to others or just enjoy them yourself.
Occasionally, when baking, there may be some questions that arise like, why do my cookies taste like flour? What are the reasons behind that issue?
Keep reading to learn the cause of cookies that taste like flour.
Why Do Cookies Taste Like Flour?
Incorrect Measurement Of Flour
Baking requires a lot of precision, as the measurement has to be spot on.
Incorrect measurement, especially with flour, is the biggest cause of cookies tasting like flour. People tend to scoop the flour directly out of the bag, which isn’t good.
Flour settles easily and gets packed tightly in a bag. You should fluff up the flour before you measure it to make sure you don’t get packed flour.
Scooping out flour directly from the bag will make you end up having more flour than needed – around 30 percent extra flour in your cookie dough. And, that means you will make your cookies tough, dry, and taste like flour.
Didn’t Strictly Follow The Recipe
For cookie baking recipes, people mostly use all-purpose flour as it comes with a decent price but still can give a good taste. Yet, some recipes will require you to use a particular type of flour to help achieve the products’ best result.
As we know, if you substitute your cookie flour with other types, the outcome can change terribly like floury taste cookies, crumbly, and fragile cookies.
Therefore, it would be best to strictly follow what the recipe asked for so that your cookies won’t come out with bad results.
Keep Opening The Oven Door
Repeatedly opening the oven door is a factor that contributes to cookie taste like flour. That is because whenever you open that door, the heat escapes and makes the oven temperature dropdown.
As the temperature is not hot enough, your cookies cannot spread, so they will end up not cooking thoroughly and raw in the middle.
Therefore, instead of peeking, you can use the oven window to check your cookies. You only have to open the oven door once your cookies are done to take it out.
Didn’t Preheat The Oven Before Baking
Didn’t preheat the oven before putting in the cookies is one of the common mistakes that happen while baking. We bet that you don’t do it intentionally but just fail to remember to preheat the oven.
However, the preheat process is crucial for making cookies, as cookie baking time is very short. It will take you a maximum of 12 minutes to bake a batch of cookies, so the oven temperature must be right when putting the cookie tray into it.
If you happen not to preheat the oven before baking, your cookies may taste like flour as they are all under-baked.
OverworkThe Dough
Overworking the dough is another reason leading to cookies tasting like flour.
While kneading, mixing, or rolling, the flour will release a protein called gluten that makes your dough tougher and harder the more you work with it.
Harden dough can contribute to under-baked cookies, as the dough won’t spread in the baking process. Therefore, when you eat your cookies, there will be a floury taste to it.
Overworking dough can frequently happen with all types of cookie dough, yet especially rolled cookies. How you can avoid this situation is to mix or roll your dough little by little and as gently as possible.
Use Stale Baking Soda or Baking Powder
Stale baking soda or baking powder can cause cookies with a floury taste as it is an important chemical leavening agent giving baked goods the rise.
If your baking soda or baking powder is stale, it won’t give you cookies a good rise, and they can come out with the taste exactly like raw flour.
Therefore, it is critical to check your baking soda or baking powder before baking to avoid raw and floury taste in cookies. When that baking soda is older than six months, it is time you should get rid of it.
Use Too Soft Butter
If your butter is too soft, you will have to face a baking problem called insufficient aeration. Rather than holding in the air, the too soft butter will flop over onto the dough, making it heavy instead of fluffy.
Then, when you bring that dough into baking, your cookies can be under-baked as the dough is too dense. That would lead to your cookies taste like flour.
Use Cold Butter
Cold butter can result in denser dough as it isn’t combined with the other ingredients while creaming. The colder the butter, the denser the dough.
If your dough is too dense, it will not spread enough and be under-baked. And, once again, your cookies will come with a floury taste.
Therefore, what you need when baking is cool butter instead of too soft butter, melted butter, or stone-cold butter.
What Are Other Cookie Problems?
Flat, Rock, And Dark Brown Cookies
Below is the picture of a problem when baking – rock, flat, and dark brown cookies.
So, what is the reason behind this issue? It is mainly because there is too much sugar in your cookie dough.
When the amount of sugar significantly overs the butter, your cookies will result in dark brown color as the sugar gets caramelized.
Plus, if the dough has too little butter, the cookies will become flat and rock as they aren’t thoroughly cooked. What’s worse is that those will stick to the baking sheet and leave you a hard time to get them out.
You can avoid this issue by lessening the sugar amount in the recipe.
Dark And Crispy Cookies
What is the cause of dark and crispy cookies? Does it come from bad dough? No! they are either baked at an overly high temperature or longer than the recipe.
Therefore, it would help if you paid more attention to take your cookies out at the right time. You can perhaps try to invest in an oven with a thermometer to ensure that you have accurate oven temperatures.
Dry And Stiff Cookies
Looking through the oven and seeing your cookies don’t spread out? Those cookies taste crumbly and dry when coming out?
What’s wrong with it? Let me tell you the reason. Dry and stiff cookies result from too much flour in the dough, leading to the cookie being unspreadable and hard to soften.
Soft And Pale Cookies
This type of cookie is the hardest one to recognize as they look very similar to perfect ones. They were all from a good dough, but they ended up a bit raw on the inside and under-baked after finishing baking.
That can be the outcome of the low oven temperature. Or else, you probably have taken the cookies out too soon.
What you can do to prevent it from happening is to watch your cookies closely and take them out at the right time.
What To Avoid?
Always Sift Your Flour
Sifting your flour is a needed thing in baking, as it will ensure that there are no big chunks of flour present. It also helps form a fluffy texture for a good result of your cookies.
You can repeat this action with hard sugar. It can be white sugar, brown sugar, granulated sugar, or any others – they are all fine.
Good mixing is the key
Good mixing is the key to a good batch of cookies, as it directly affects the cookie batter. You can use food processors and mixers to give your cookie dough a fine consistency so that the result won’t become floury.
Never Scoop Flour
As we mentioned above, scooping flour straight out from the bag can end up doubling the amount of flour needed for your cookie-making recipe. And that is the main reason cookies taste like flour.
Therefore, the right way to measure flour is to get a digital scale with grams setting to weigh the flour accurately.
What Tricks To Make Cookies Taste Good?
Before making the cookies taste delicious, you can bake a basic batch of cookies without making any mistakes or problems mentioned above.
If you have already passed that beginner level of baking, you can now find more ways to elevate the taste of your cookies. Here are some suggestions based on our experience:
- Two minutes before the set cooking time, you can take the cookies out of the oven. In this way, your cookies will have a chewier and softer finish. Sounds weird, right? Yet, you can trust us since we have already tried it before.
- Chilling dough before baking can make your cookies well-shaped, more tender, and have stronger flavored cookies. As you rest the dough in the fridge, those flavors such as milk, spices, salt, vanilla extract, and sweeteners will become more heightened and concentrated.
- You can add some extra mix-ins like chocolate powder, candies, white chocolate chips, pretzels, or nuts to upgrade your dough’s flavor profile.
Conclusion
After reading, we hope that you can have the answer to the question of why do my cookies taste like flour.
Moreover, with the tricks for better-tasting cookies, you can confidently make yourself a batch of sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, or any others that you want.
Good luck with your baking!
