Why Are People Putting *This* In Their Chocolate Chip Cookies?

You may have heard the internet buzz around adding water to chocolate chip cookie dough. Is water the ingredient your cookies have been missing? Or is it all hype? We tested the theory using our most popular chocolate chip cookie recipe, and then asked a baking pro for her expert thoughts. Here’s what we discovered.

Why Add Water to Cookie Dough?

Opinions differ on the potential benefits of adding water to cookie dough batter. The recipe for The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies claims that the addition of a small amount of water, “creates steam as [the cookie] bakes, working with the baking soda to puff the cookies up.” Others claim mixing warm water with baking soda helps remove clumps and disperses it with the other ingredients in the recipe. Finally, the warm water is thought to help jump-start the action of the baking soda. But are any of these theories true?

We Asked the Experts

Chef Susan Reid, expert baker and writer at The Well Plated Life says that dissolving baking soda in water “is likely a holdover from a long time ago as a method to evenly disperse the baking soda in the batter.” That’s because baking soda readily absorbs moisture and is prone to clumping. Luckily, thanks to advances in food storage options, this step isn’t necessary. Instead, Reid recommends whisking the leaveners through a sifter with the rest of the dry ingredients to accomplish the same task. 

As for other benefits, Reid says that the most likely effect of adding water to cookie dough batter would be a cakier texture, depending on the amount. Reid also says there’s no real benefit of mixing the water and baking soda as a way to accelerate the leavening action. “This would have a marginal contribution given the small gradations with the small volume and short bake time of cookies,” she says.

We Tested It Ourselves

We needed to see for ourselves if adding water to our cookie dough batter made any difference. We made two batches of our recipe for The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies, one with water and one without. The only difference between the two preparations was that for one of the batches we mixed the baking soda in 1 tablespoon of warm water before adding it to the dough.

The Results

Is it worth adding water to your cookie dough? Based on our testing, no. After baking both batches, we noticed no difference in appearance or taste. Even blind taste testers thought the cookies looked and tasted the same.

While we’d love to end the story there, we need to point out that there is another variable at play here, moisture. Since cookie dough is composed of ingredients with varying amounts of moisture, results can differ from batch to batch and baker to baker. Elevation and humidity can also alter results. So while adding 1 tablespoon of water to my cookies did nothing, it could have a different impact for someone else, somewhere else.

Bottom Line

The most likely benefit of adding water to your cookie dough is to help hydrate the batter. If your dough looks dry after mixing (especially when using browned butter), adding a tablespoon or two of water could be just what your dough needs to prevent a dry, crumbly cookie. Our advice? Have some water on standby, but don’t assume you’ll need to use it.