Hi JBP, we don't think your recent issues are related to a change in the water content of AA American butter, but if your recipe originally called for shortening and you have taken to substituting butter, this could contribute to more spreading. It's also possible your oven might be running low, or you're not preheating it sufficiently. A lower oven temperature can cause the butter to melt before the cookies have time to set. It might be worth purchasing an inexpensive oven thermometer, preheating your oven for a full 30 minutes, and then checking to make sure the thermometer reads the correct temperature before baking your cookies. It's easy enough to reset the oven dial and wait for the oven to come to temperature before baking, and this may improve your results. 

If you don't think this is the issue, have you changed the type of flour you use? Different brands of All-Purpose Flour can vary quite a bit in protein levels (ours tends to be higher in protein than other brands), and this affects not only how much gluten is formed, but also how much liquid the flour is able to absorb. If you happened to be using a lower protein flour, this could also contribute to spreading. As an experiment, you might want to try baking your cookies with our Bread Flour to see if that improves your results. One more possibility may be related to how you measure your flour. If you traditionally measured your flour by cups and have recently switched to weighing, this could cause you to add less flour to the recipe, which could cause more spreading. While weighing your flour is definitely more accurate and will work perfectly when making our recipes with our flour, it could be that your particular cookie recipe requires a bit more flour. 

• Reply