Skàld Bakery's Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

This recipe from our friends at Skáld Bakery in St. Louis is sure to become your new favorite. The secret?  Janie's Mill Organic Oat Flakes and Silky Smooth Pastry Flour, plus 2 kinds of raisins, and a hint of whiskey!

Skáld Bakery owners Kyle Shelby and Natalie Suntrup offer their Scandinavian-inspired breads and pastries at the Tower Grove Farmers Market, as well as at their brick-and-mortar location in Lindenwood Park.

Explaining the origin of their bakery's name, they say: 

We named our bakery Skáld for two reasons. Scald is the name for a porridge of gelatinized flour that we regularly use in our breads and pastries! It lends itself to a softer crumb, and a slightly higher shelf life. In ancient Scandinavia, skáld was the Old Norse word for a composer and reciter of poems honoring heroes and their deeds. Through our baking, it is our intention to honor the hard work of the farmers and millers whose products we have the privilege of working with! 

Yield: 12 large cookies

Total Time: 90 minutes (plus chilling the dough for 4 hours - overnight)

Ingredients

• 267 g (2 1⁄4 cups) Janie's Mill Silky Smooth Pastry Flour
• 4 g (1 teaspoon) baking powder
• 4 g (1⁄2 teaspoon) baking soda
• 160 g (1 1⁄2 cups) Janie's Mill Oat Flakes (Rolled Oats)
• 7 g (1 teaspoon) salt
• 187 g (1 3⁄4 sticks)  butter
• 240 g (1 cup + 3 tablespoons) granulated sugar
• 107 g (1⁄2 cup) brown sugar
• 80 g eggs (about 2 medium eggs)
• 20 g (1 1⁄2 tablespoons) whiskey (preferably oat whiskey)
• 213 g (1 1⁄2 cups) golden raisin
• 213 g (1 1⁄2 cups) Jumbo Flame raisins
  

Instructions

1. First, take a moment to scale out your ingredients.

• To your mixer bowl, add the granulated sugar, brown sugar, salt, and softened butter.
• Scale into separate bowls your oats, eggs, and oat whiskey.
• In another bowl, scale together your pastry flour, baking soda, and baking powder and whisk them together.
• Weigh and add both kinds of raisins to another bowl and mix them together.

1. Using the paddle attachment at a medium speed, cream together the granulated sugar, brown sugar, salt, and softened butter until the mixture is much lighter in color, and has about doubled in volume. Think fluffy! You may need to scrape down the sides of the bowl about halfway through. Don’t rush!
2. While your butter, sugar, and salt is creaming together, thoroughly whisk or blend together your eggs and whiskey. Once your butter/sugar/salt is fluffy enough, slightly increase the mixer speed and very slowly stream in the egg/whiskey mixture.
3. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix again to ensure mixture is homogenous.
4. Add your oats all at once and mix together on a medium speed, ensuring that the oats are thoroughly coated. (This gives the oats a chance to hydrate a bit more than if they were added at the same time as the flour.)
5. Add your flour/baking soda/baking powder mixture to the bowl and mix on a low speed until there is no more visible dry flour and a shaggy cookie dough consistency has formed.
6. Add your raisins all at once, and mix until homogenous. Try not to over-mix.
7. Line a tray with parchment or silpat and portion your cookies onto it. If you don’t have a 2.66 oz cookie scoop, you can either scale the dough by hand into ~120g portions, or use whatever scoop you have. If you deviate too far from the 120g portion size your baking time and temperature will require more guesswork.
8. Cover and rest your cookie dough portions in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours, but preferably over-night.
9. Preheat your oven to 350F. This recipe is for a non-convection oven. If using a convection oven you may need to lower the temperature by 25-50 degrees, or shorten the bake time, or some combination of the two!
10. While your oven is pre-heating, arrange your cookies onto two lined half-sheet trays. Six cookies per tray, evenly spaced etc. Garnish each cookie with a generous pinch of Fleur de Sel. Maldon flaky salt will also work in a pinch.
11. Once your oven has reached 350F, bake the cookies for 16 minutes, rotating half-way through. After the 16 minutes are up check on the cookies. They will most likely not be done. Set another 2 min timer and check again. Keep setting two-minute timers until the cookies are finished. Some people like them darker, others lighter. The choice is yours! We tend to let the edges brown, but not the center, aiming for a cookie that is still slightly dome shaped upon removal from the oven. We let the cookie finish baking on the tray as it rests and cools. If you leave the cookies in the oven until they brown evenly, deflate, and become flat, you will still have a good cookie, and even better for dipping in milk. The raisins in this recipe act as a sort of textural buffer, and will lend a nice chewy texture to an over-baked cookie that would otherwise be too brittle or crunchy.