• I tried chocolate chip cookies from the bakery section of Kroger, Safeway, Walmart and Costco.
• As a professional bakerI had high expectations — but Safeway and Walmart didn’t impress me much.
• Costco’s cookies were soft and not too sweet with lots of chocolate chips.

As a professional baker, I’ve probably done it made thousands of chocolate cakes from the ground up.

Chocolate chip cookies were also one of the first things I learned to make as a child, and I’ve since spent a lot of time refining my own recipes for different versions of the classic, from soft and chewy to crunchy and spiky.

So of course I have strong opinions about what makes a good chocolate bar.

I don’t like them overly sweet, which usually happens when there isn’t enough bitter-but-balancing chocolate folded into the dough. Soft centers and crispy edges are ideal, but there are certainly many different opinions on the texture of the cake.

While I usually make large batches of my own dough to stash in the freezer for a rainy day, I also understand that when the craving hits, you want a store-bought option that will satisfy.

So I tried chocolate chip cookies from the bakery section of four national chains near me in Seattle – Costco, Kroger, Safeway, and Walmart. This is how they got together.