Whole Wheat Sablé Stand Mixer

Makes about forty-eight 2-inch cookies

Of all the good cookies I’ve baked, this is the one I turn to again and again: the unadorned Whole Wheat Sablé. To me, it’s the little black dress of cookies—simple, elegant, and endlessly reliable. Thanks to Alice Medrich, with a hat tip to Luisa Weiss.

128g King Arthur unbleached all-purpose flour
113g King Arthur whole-wheat flour
225g unsalted butter, softened and cut into 1-inch pieces (I use Kerrygold)
100g granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Heat a convection oven to 325°F, as I do, or a regular oven to 350°F.

Stir the flours together in a bowl and set aside.

In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, sugar, salt, and vanilla for about 1 minute, just until smooth. Scrape down the bowl, add the flour all at once, and mix just until combined. Knead the dough briefly by hand to make sure all the flour is incorporated.

Form the dough into one 12 × 2-inch log or two 6 × 2-inch logs. Wrap in parchment or plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, preferably overnight.

Cut the cold dough into ¼-inch-thick slices and arrange the cookies 1½ inches apart on cool, parchment-lined baking sheets.

Bake until the cookies are light brown at the edges, about 14 minutes in my convection oven.

Let the cookies cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer them with a small offset spatula to cooling racks.

These cookies are even better the next day. Alice Medrich says, “They can be stored in an airtight container for at least a month.” I doubt they’ll last that long.

Note: When you take a tray out of the oven, the temperature drops. Let the oven recover for 5 minutes before starting another batch—the same amount of time the cookies should rest on their baking sheets before being transferred to cooling racks.

Always place fresh dough on cool half-sheet pans. Have enough pans available that you do not need to reuse them while they are still warm.

Make sure the oven is fully preheated before baking. An oven thermometer can help confirm that the temperature is accurate and stable.

Personal Notes

By the time I tried this recipe, I had already learned to make cookie-dough logs and developed a method that works well for me. I make the dough one day, form it into logs, refrigerate it overnight, and bake the cookies the next morning.

I use a stainless-steel ruler to measure the slices and cut the cold dough quickly with a Messermeister cheese knife—it glides right through. This helps the cookies stay round.

To keep things moving smoothly, I use nine half-sheet pans and five cooling racks. I bake three trays at a time in my Wolf dual-fuel range on convection mode without rotating the pans. I let the baked cookies cool briefly on the trays before using a small offset spatula to transfer them to racks.

Whole Wheat Sable on Left