The Windkey and the Lamplighter

I got some neat AirBake cookie sheets for a wedding present, so I’ve
been using them almost exclusively since then. It has been a series
of interesting failures—all tasty, but none cohesive.

The first set were much too soft—my usual oatmeal cookie recipe with
fresh cranberries instead of rasins or chocolate chips. They came out
like partially-cooked dough, and all stuck together in the cookie jar,
even though I waited for them to cool on the rack.

The second set, made with apples and wheat instead of white flour
(I thought we were out of white flour, and found it too late) turned
out pretty soft, too. I cooked these in three batches, with three
pretty different results:

350F, 12 minutes
This is the high range of the usual time, but the cookies
came out too soft to even stay stuck together. I ended up
rebaking some of them.
350F, 15 minutes
Still soft, but darker—bottom still not burned, which is
supposed to be the magic of airbake.
375F, 12 minutes
Better, but still really sticky. Some are still gooey
375F, 15 minutes
Still sticky, but quite thoroughly cooked—I have no raw egg
worries with these.

I suspect the stickyness has something to do with the flour. The
Internet tells me [whole wheat flour makes baked goods denser and
coarser in texture][], and that I should replace no more than half of
my all-purpose flour with whole wheat. It does not say why, though.
Another site tells me "whole-wheat pastry flour is milled from a
soft, or low-protein, variety of wheat that doesn’t form much gluten
(strong, elastic strands of protein) when it’s mixed."
But I did not have pastry flour, I had normal wheat flour.
It is pretty finely milled, though, so that is still my going theory.