I used El Rey discs from my local Whole Foods. I don't know about other areas, but at the two I've been to in San Francisco, they're readily available. I mixed ~60% and ~70% 50/50 and they tasted great. It makes a big difference over using chips. Mmmmm.

I also used the flour called for in the recipe. There's a great store near me that sells bulk... well, pretty much bulk everything. I only bought as much as I would need because I mostly just use AP flour. Unfortunately they only had milk chocolate discs, which sent me to Whole Foods. I'm sure for people without an awesome store like mine, Whole Foods probably has other flours available in their bulk section if you don't want to buy 5 pound bags of the stuff.

I don't know if it was just this recipe or what, but the dough definitely seemed firmer than other, similar cookie recipes that use AP flour, and that's before the resting. I'm sure the cookies are extremely delicious without using the less common ingredients, but after making them according to the recipe, I urge everyone to try it at least once.

I seem to remember reading something about bread flour absorbing more liquid than ap...perhaps? Thus the reason you use bread flour in pate a choux recipes as opposed to ap - you get a crunchier puff. Not positive, but you guys should look into that.

The next time I make these cookies, I will probably use some good chips instead of the discs. They're freaking delicious, but $10 for one ingredients in a batch of cookies is a little much for every day. I think I'll save them for special occasions.

I'm really anxious to try this recipe, but I'm spooked by the salt on top. Don't get me wrong, I love chocolate covered pretzels exactly because of the chunks of salt in the chocolate, but salty top cookies just doesn't seem right to me.

In some photos, the salt is plainly visible on the top. My initial impression is that it would be sugar, but I fear that catching a big hunk of salt would be unnerving to say the least. When I first read the NYT article, I figured a light sprinkle of very finely ground salt would be the way to go, but now I'm thinking the opposite is true.

So, why not just increase the amount of salt in the dough itself, if it's a flavor enhancer? Am I missing something?

I'm pondering wether you could take a good quality chocolate chip (for those who cant find the specialty disks or are balking at the price) and simply turn them into disks. I've made disks from chocolate chips for decorating purposes by laying them out on waxed or parchment paper (over a cookie sheet), applying a very small amount of heat (via a warm oven or even a microwave) and laying another sheet of waxed paper or parchment over the chips to flatten them. Of course this could be tedious and not worth your time, but I suppose it may be a workable solution for those of you that cant find the discs.

I think having the salt sprinkled on top makes some sharper salty flavors come through. It is more than just an enhancer, to me -- for a brief moment what you are tasting is a deep salty flavor immediately before being transported to an extremely sweet and chocolatey flavor.

So, are you looking for big chunks of salt? Or do you want a fine dusting of salt all over the tops? The more I think about the more appealing it's becoming. I should get my dough aging before thinking too much about it.

I've seen old cookie recipes that call for smashing some sugar onto the tops of the raw cookies with the bottom of a glass. This created an interesting texture on the top, as most of the sugar dissolved into the cookie itself. A similar technique could help you get the chocolate discs into the horizontal orientation.

If the discs are that expensive, it seems like buying some quality bar chocolate and chopping it might makes sense. You'd probably have some spare crumbs, but it wouldn't be to hard to find something to do with them!

I remember a bakery in Newburryport, MA that made these huge cookies with random giant chunks of chocolate. I'm pretty sure they did not age the dough though, but they were great all the same. I don't know if the place is still there. I think it was called Middle St. Foods. It's a hard place to miss, if you've ever been to that town.

I used discs when I made the cookies. My cookies ended up looking like they contained more chocolate than any of the chip-containing variations of this recipe I've seen online. However, because of the way the chocolate melted, there were still plenty of cookie-only spots. I thought it was the perfect amount of chocolate.

Bread flour is more finely milled and is fine-textured, milled from soft-wheat flour with a high starch content. It has the lowest protein content of any wheat flour. It's also bleached; bleaching makes it acidic (I think) this somehow helps it create a finer texture. Cake flour will absorb more liquid-maybe helping with the resting period, but if you were to use only bread flour, you would get a crumbly, drier cookie; Bread flour has more gluten and protein than either cake or all purpose flour, it also has (or used to have)a very small amount of malted barley flour and potassium bromate added. The high gluten and protein content as well as the little bit of barley helps add to the elasticity of the finished product-think of a nice thin chewy pizza crust.
Usually when people combine the two they are trying get crisp lightness from the cake flour with the chewy-ness of bread flour. That what i think is going on in the recipe; but I pretty much use bread flour for everything-but I only bake "monster" cookies; I tend to make bread and pizza crusts,etc.

Crap! I was thinking "cake" and typing bread! In the first part up to "Bread flour has more gluten" It should read "Cake FLour" Sorry. I worked 16 hours lastnight and am kind of the waking dead right now....

After having done more taste tests, I'd like to modify my salt-opinion. I still think that it's primarily a flavor enhancer, but I definitely get pleasant little zings of salt every now and then. (Pinbot--think "salted caramels" and the like. It's just a little flavor--not like licking a salt lick.)

I think the problem is that when you sprinkle the sea salt on the mounds of cookie dough, the salt stays right on top. When the cookie spreads out, the salt still stays in a little area.

I'm wondering if sprinkling the entire ball of dough before putting it on the baking sheet would work, or if the cookie would end up tasting too salty. Or maybe sprinkling the salt onto the cookie halfway through cooking when it's still gooey enough that the salt sticks but the cookie has already spread?

More experimentation necessary! Yum! I love salt and sweet!

Very delicious! I had to make more extensive changes than most, baking at high altitude (5400 ft). Like many others, I used AP flour (a bit more of it for the altitude), a bit less butter, sugar and leavening, and hand chopped bittersweet chocolate (Trader Joe's Pound Plus). As a result, mine were a tiny bit puffier than most of the pictures I've seen, but that was welcome in the land of flat, hard cookies.

They were a phenomenal hit at a foodie party, so they must have worked. The chopped chocolate made for some incredible pockets of molten chocolate, combined with chocolate dust elsewhere in the dough, making them messy and oh-so-delicious. I definitely recommend that route if you are willing to put in a little more work, but how much work should a cookie be?

By virtue of timing, we ended up having a last batch to make after about 48 hours, and those were even better than the ones that waited 24 hours. But who can wait that long unless you have other cookies to eat in the meantime? I think this recipe is a keeper for the days I have enough patience or forethought.

LOVE the idea of the salt. I have to make gravlax tonight, which should take all of about ten seconds. After that, maybe I'll whip up a batch of cookie dough...for baking on Thursday.

Does anyone have a gluten-free version of this recipe? Or a really good gluten-free chocolate chip cookie? Or gluten-free snicker doodle? Gooey-butter cookies? Those are my 3 favorite cookies that I want to make for my close friend that has recently found a gluten allergy. Just because she can't have any glutens doesn't mean she can't have any cookies. Help me find a way to give her some really good cookies.

Ginkgojoe, you could try just subbing in GF flour plus a tsp. of xantham gum for the total flour in the recipe, and resting it for 36 hours, but the success of the NYT depends on the physical transformation of the flour and butter, and GF flour behaves differently. Even if they don't turn out, they probably won't be more yucky than most GF cookies, and your friend will appreciate the attempt!

I made the NYT cookies and found they were good, but I'm unsure if I thought they were THAT good. The two flours seemed fussy, and while I'm sure the feves are good, I'm not making a special trip for them, especially as my grocery coop sells Guittard chips in bulk. As you commented at one point, the beauty of a pantry cookie is being able to make it with the ingredients at hand, not spending a bunch on special ingredients.

I made a batch at 31 hours and again at 47 hours, and the cookies definitely need to rest 36 hours. I found the chilled dough hard to scoop. I usually make Pam Anderson's Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, fromUSA Weekend. She advocates freezing the dough balls for at least 30 minutes. The recipe is much less fussy, but turns out a cookie very like the NYT--puffy, crunchy on the outside, chewy in the middle. I did a full post on the experience here.

we made a basic variation (AP flour, regular choc chips) but could only stand a 24 wait time & they were delicious. one problem i have though that i can't quite figure out (that probably has a simple solution; i'm a baking neophyte) -- my cookies always seem to end up much more puffy than i would like. usually, when i make chocolate chip cookies, i flatten them out into discs before putting them in the oven to lessen the effect, although this time i made them golf-ball-style. i live pretty much at sea level, always check the oven temp, & have replaced my baking powder & soda since i first noticed this. any thoughts on what i might be doing wrong?

Alright, I'm going to make the recipe. I already have lots of bread flour, so picking up some cake flour is no big deal. I probably will spring for the expensive discs, in the name of science. If not, I'll get some of those broken hunks of Ghirardelli they sell at Trader Joe's and chop it up myself.

I am a bit miffed at the lack of nuts in these cookies. Personally, I think without walnuts chocolate chip cookies feel naked. I've tried other nuts: Pecans - too firm, Almonds - wrong kind of synergy, Macadamia - bland.

Growing up, I made 'back of the bag' Toll House cookies a lot. One variation I discovered, out of pure sloth, worked out really well. I already liked doubling the amount of walnuts, but really wasn't a big fan of chopping them. To this day I'm pretty crappy with my knife skills.

Instead, I grabbed a rolling pin and beat the walnuts into submission, while still in their bag. You do need to open a corner to let the air out, but it works and the end result is range of nut particles from large chunks to dust. Somehow, the walnut dust binds with the dough and really enhances the overall flavor. I've been doing it that way ever since, much to the dismay of anybody who might be watching.

I think for these cookies, there's only one possible alternative and that would be Hazelnuts, mainly because the shape and size looks like it might go really well with the giant pools of chocolate, and they fit the extreme theme. But, I still love walnuts most of all, and these things could possibly support walnut halves nicely. Do you think adding nuts would ruin the purity of this recipe?

I'm definitely going to salt them, but I will flatten them out first. I figure I have to orient the chocolate and provide a means for getting an even salting on the top, so this recipe is calling out for cookie flattening. It might mess with the 'three rings' effect a bit, but I think they should all still be there, perhaps in different proportions. Even if you flatten the top of a drop cookie, it's still going to expand in the oven.

Resting the dough was quite a revelation to my search for an awesome chocolate chip cookie. And I'm hoping the chocolate disks will be another big leap when I bake my cookies. But I still have one more issue: texture. Does anyone know the secret to getting chocolate chip cookies to have that "bakery-bought" texture? Mine always come out of the oven smooth on top and looking something like a muffin top rather than a bumpy textured cookie. Does anyone else have this problem or even know what I mean? Thanks!

I second ratgrrrl and schraderjill's comments - mine were super yummy but didn't look like the picture at all. They are round and puffy, but still soft on the inside. I'd prefer them to look 'fallen' and be more flat. Perhaps a lower temp for a minute or so less? Thanks !

What did I do wrong? I’ve used the same recipe twice. Both times, the cookies turned out flat!!! I thought I forgot either the baking soda or powder the first time, but I made sure I checked off all the ingredients the second time around and the result is the same. I substituted the flours with AP (2 cups) and unsalted butter with salted, and deceased the salt to 1 teaspoons. What am I missing? I still have dough sitting in the fridge.