Classic Brownies

Rich and flavorful, these gooey brownies are sinfully good.  (The sin being the 12 tbsp of butter that went into them.  Eek!)  The key to their fudgy consistency was being really dedicated to folding the flour into the batter instead of stirring it.  The recipe recommended folding with a rubber spatula until only a few streaks of flours were left, and this seemed to work great.

The delicious science underneath is that when you're mixing batter or dough, you are forming a gluten network.  According to The Science of Good Cooking, gluten is what gives bread its structure and chewiness, but this is a less desirable quality in brownies or quick breads (like banana bread).  By folding batter with a rubber spatula instead of stirring, you reduce much of this gluten formation and leave your brownies soft and crumbly.  Mmmm...

Another clever trick was the use of a foil sling.  By putting two foil sheets perpendicular into the pan, you can simply lift the brownies out after they've cooled.  And clean up is a snap!

"Making a Foil Sling" - America's Test Kitchen

Brilliant!

Adjustments/Substitutions

I didn't have any unsweetened chocolate on hand, or a burning desire to go to the store, so I substituted for semi-sweet chocolate chips and used 6 tbsp less sugar to compensate.  Also, I don't own a 13"x9" baking pan, so I had to use an 8"x8" pan.  This left a lot of guess work for the bake time, which ended up being close to 45 minutes instead of 30.

Next Time...

My biggest issue was using an 8"x8" pan instead of 13"x9".  This made the brownies much taller, and I thought I could simply compensate by increased baking time.  They came out of the oven looking picture perfect, but after cooling for about an hour, the center collapsed in.  I'm not sure if I should've let them bake for slightly longer, but I think just using the proper 13"x9" pan would be a much better plan in the future.

Source: The Science of Good Cooking (ISBN: 978-1-933615-98-1)