The Knewton Blog


Reverse-engineering Levain Bakery’s famous cookies [RECIPE]

Posted on February 22, 2012 by

10

A couple of years ago, some of my Upper West Side colleagues at Knewton began bringing me cookies from a place called Levain Bakery. They’re very good.  I’m an avid baker, so I was pretty curious about them. And I love cookies! So I recently thought I’d try to make some Levain-style cookies at home.

But it turns out that they don’t publish their recipes, and it’s like some kind of state secret. It turns out, further, that the Internet is REPLETE with recipes from people who have tried to clone Levain cookies. Seriously, just google it.

And I do love a challenge. So here is my attempt to reverse-engineer their cookies. Specifically, their dark chocolate peanut butter chip.  (I’m crazy for all peanut butter chocolate combinations.) The same principles should work to re-engineer their other cookies.

The recipe came out very well. I’d say it was extremely similar to and slightly better than the Levain cookie. (My cookies had the advantage of not traveling and being fresher than I typically get my Levain cookies. Plus, I used awesome ingredients that are hard for a professional bakery to use in large scale.)  They were wonderfully dense and doughy inside — chewy but not too chewy — with a nice delicate crunch from the exterior. The height of each cookie was 1.5 – 2 inches.

I used a blend of all-purpose flour and bread flour to increase the doughiness and rising power of the cookies without making them too chewy. You have to use a high ratio of flour to wet ingredients. I used mostly brown sugar for extra toffee notes. Very cold butter improves the texture of the final cookie. I felt like I used slightly too much cocoa powder (I used 3/4 cup) so I reduced it to 5/8ths for this recipe. Ripping the cookies in half and inverting the halves to conjoin the smooth ends – and leave the ragged, textured ends exposed — and then freezing the formed cookies, seems to drastically improve the texture.

Enjoy!

Sift dry ingredients together.

  • 1.5 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 cup bread flour
  • 5/8 cup high quality cocoa powder
  • 5/8 teaspoon baking soda
  • 5/8 teaspoon salt

Beat cold butter until pasty. Add sugars and beat until incorporated. Add vanilla and eggs. Don’t overbeat at any step here; stop when ingredients are incorporated. Extra blending doesn’t improve flavor; it just warms the butter.

  • 1 3/4 sticks high quality unsalted butter, cold, cut into small pieces. I used Kate’s.
  • 1 cup packed light brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 1/4 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 large egg + 1 large egg yolk

Add chips and fold in until evenly distributed.

  • 1 cup peanut butter chips
  • 1 cup small chunks of Scharffenberger or Valrhona semisweet chocolate (don’t use the dust or the very small pieces). Or use lame chocolate chips if you must.

Roll the dough into a cylinder about 2 inches in diameter. Cut into twelve 1.5 inch or so segments.

Rip each segment in half and conjoin the smooth ends, leaving the ragged ends exposed. The whole point is to increase the raggedness of the surface area to maximize crunch in the final product. This step really does improve the cookie.

Place all the uncooked cookies on parchment paper and cover loosely with plastic wrap.

Freeze for 1-2 hours.

Cook in center of oven for 17-18 minutes at 375. Adjust oven racks as needed to make sure the bottoms don’t burn.

Cookies are done when they are mostly firm on top (as opposed to doughy. They will still be delicate.) There should still be some darker spots here and there of not-quite-done cookie dough in most of the cookies.

Place on rack immediately.

Posted in From Jose, Knewton | 10 comments



  • matt

    nice recipe! so to make the chocolate chip walnut ones what would i take out of your recipe and what would i add? thanks!

    • Becca

      Ditto Matt’s question, Jose! Would love to see you post your choc chip walnut recipe. PS, I liked the story of how you discovered Levain!

  • Jose

    Here you go!  I might make some today.  Yum.

    Sift dry ingredients together.
    1 3/4 cups all purpose flour1 1/4 cup bread flour3/4 teaspoon baking soda3/4 teaspoon salt
    Beat cold butter until pasty. Add sugars and beat until incorporated. Add vanilla and eggs. Don’t overbeat at any step here; stop when ingredients are incorporated. Extra blending doesn’t improve flavor; it just warms the butter.

    2 1/4 sticks high quality unsalted butter, cold, cut into small pieces. 1 cup packed light brown sugar1/4 cup granulated sugar2 teaspoon vanilla1 large egg + 1 large egg yolk

    2 cups of semisweet chunks of freshly chopped Scharffenberger or Valrhona chocolate.  Walnuts too if you like. I’d be tempted to roast the walnuts in the oven first.

    Roll into a fat cylinder. Cut into 8 or 10 segments (these should be big cookies!). Rip each segment in half and conjoin the smooth ends, leaving the ragged ends exposed. The whole point is to increase the raggedness of the surface area to maximize crunch in the final product. This step really does improve the cookie. Place all the uncooked cookies on parchment paper and cover loosely with plastic wrap.
    Freeze for 1-2 hours.

    Cook center rack in preheated 375 oven for 16-18 min. Watch closely from 15min on. They should be just holding together and a little browned on top when you take them out.  They’ll be almost not holding together when you take them out, and then will stabilize somewhat as they cool.

    • Ohmbecca

      Oh wow, thanks! Just saw your recipe today; I bet they came out really well when you tried them. Happy Fourth. ;)

  • Ben

    Two questions: I heard from someone that Levain said on a cookie cook-off with bobby flay that they do not use vanilla in their cookies – have you heard this?!?!
    Also should the cookies go immedtiately from freezer into oven? 
    Many Thanks

    • Jose

      DIdn’t hear that. But vanilla is a expensive ingredient, with a pretty mild effect, so maybe they figure they can skip it. I certainly think it’s skippable in a cookie like dark chocolate peanut butter chip, because the strong flavor will down out the vanilla. But in any cookie with a basic dough, like regular chocolate chip, I believe the vanilla (and brown sugar) is important to get the kinds of toffee notes you want from the batter.
      And, yes, the cookies should go straight from the freezer to the oven with no delay at all!

  • Ezra David

    Is it ok if the cookie has been to freezer for more than 2 hours. Cafe Fitouts Sydney

    • Jose

      yes, no problem. I’ve never tried keeping it in the freezer for as long as 24 hours, but I suspect it will still be fine. If you try it, please let us know!

  • http://www.facebook.com/kevinkgoertzen Kevin Goertzen

    Jose. You. Are. A. God. Though I’m yet to try your adaptation of the chocolate chip walnut, I have tried, on several occasions, your recipe for the chocolate chip peanut butter cookies. It is as close to matching Levain Bakery as anyone has achieved (believe me, I’ve tried all of the recipes). When I lived in the city I made the trek from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side at least once a week for a tasty indulgence at Levain Bakery. I have since moved far away and find myself craving their decadent morsels on a daily basis. Having them shipped to me for an arm and a leg is always an option; however, your recipe has assuaged my cravings quite nicely. Thank you! What do you think would happen if I added one more egg yolk to the mix?

    • http://twitter.com/Knewton_Jose Jose Ferreira

      Hey Kevin, your note made my day–Thanks!

      So I think an extra egg yolk will just make it a little richer. This batter has to be really dry in order for the cookie to maintain that rise and interior chewiness, but one more yolk shouldn’t make any difference.

      I have tweaked the chocolate chip recipe quite a bit since I posted it, so let me use your kind note as an opportunity to post it.

      First big change is I bake them for 24 min now rather than 18. 18 is just too wet. 24 seems to get a wonderful crunch on the outside (assuming you turn them inside out and freeze them per the original recpe) while making surprisingly little difference to the interior moistness.

      Second, I use both choc chips and pnut butter chips, one cup of each. This is obviously to your own taste, but I like the subtler caramel notes you get this way.

      Third, I’ve changed the amounts a little bit to do away with all the 5/8ths, which all my friends found really annoying–lol! New ingredients below:

      Sift dry ingredients together.
      1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
      1 1/4 cup bread flour
      3/4 teaspoon baking soda
      3/4 teaspoon salt

      2 1/4 sticks high quality unsalted butter, cold, cut into small pieces. I used Kate’s.
      1 cup packed light brown sugar
      1/4 cup granulated sugar
      2 teaspoon vanilla
      1 large egg + 1 large egg yolk

      By the way, to answer some other posters’ questions, I’ve found the cookie batter keeps well in the freezer for a couple of months.