The Best Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies

If you’re a sourdough fan or a chocolate chip cookie fan, you need to try these sourdough chocolate chip cookies! Like it says in the title – they’re the best!

You might be thinking, what on earth would possess someone to make up a recipe combining sourdough and cookies? One’s savory, one’s sweet, why would you do that? There’s a couple of reasons:

1. When you’re growing, keeping and caring for your own sourdough starter, sometimes you need some different recipes to use up that discarded sourdough starter. We like to be a bit inventive with this, there’s only so much sourdough bread and sourdough pizza one family can eat so, coming up with different ways to use sourdough starter has become kind of a hobby for us!
   
2. Naturally fermented sourdough is good for your gut! During the fermentation process the (good) bacteria in the sourdough starter is basically pre-digesting some of the gluten for you, making it much easier for your body to digest. Are we saying these chocolate chip cookies are healthy? Sorry, no! But I figure there’s no harm in adding extra fermented products to your diet and, if that’s going to give these sourdough chocolate chip cookies the slight edge in being better for you than traditional chocolate chip cookies, then we’ll take them!

Like anything dealing with sourdough, the process to make these cookies is a little lengthier than regular cookies as there’s a bit of resting time for the dough.

To begin you’ll need to have some active sourdough starter. When I say active, it just has to be a live sourdough starter, probably one you’ve already used to bake bread or other goodies. We’re going to use the discarded starter.

You know when you feed your starter each day and you discard half before you feed? That’s the bit we’re going to make use of, instead of throwing it away.

Start by measuring out a cup of your alive but non-fed (recently) starter. Then feed your remaining starter as you normally would.

Next put your chopped up butter and sugar and brown sugar into a mixing bowl. You could go a step further to making these healthier by swapping out the brown sugar for rapadura or coconut sugar if you wanted to.

If you’re old fashioned, or fancy an arm workout, cream these together by hand, otherwise use an electric mixer (I used hand held beaters) to blend until creamed.

Add an egg.

And beat again until smooth.

Finally, we get to use our cup of discarded sourdough starter!

Add the sourdough starter to the mixture.

Then add the vanilla essence.

And stir to combine. It will look a bit like lumpy oatmeal or porridge.

Set this mixture aside and use a separate mixing bowl to combine the dry ingredients.

First add your flour.

Then add your baking powder and baking soda.

Use a whisk to make sure your flour and baking soda/powder are well combined – you don’t want lumps of baking soda in your cookies, it does not taste good!

Then, add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients.

And mix to form a dough. Try not to over mix it, just make sure all of the flour has been incorporated into the mixture.

Add your chocolate chips – I’ve used a mixture of dark and milk chocolate chips (because I usually just use dark but I didn’t have enough) but you can use whichever type of chocolate chips you like best.

And mix them through the dough.

Now it’s time to let the dough rest. Just leave it at room temperature for 15-30 minutes.

Unlike bread proving, you won’t see a significant difference in the dough after this time, it should look pretty similar to when you left it to rest.

At some point around now preheat your oven to 180℃/350℉.

Once you’ve got some nicely rested cookie dough, scoop balls of dough (about 2 teaspoons worth) onto a lined baking tray or cookie sheet.

Then flatten slightly with clean hands or a fork.

Then pop them into your oven for 12-15 minutes.

You should have enough cookie dough for 2 baking sheets. If you’ve got some leftover dough you can freeze it in cookie dough balls to use at a later date – great for meal prepping!

You’ll know they’re cooked when they start to get brown around the edges.

Transfer to a cooli​​ng rack to cool.

Enjoy!

Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

Print Recipe

The Best Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 Cup 250g Butter
• ¾ Cup Brown Sugar
• ¾ Cup Sugar
• 1 Egg
• 1 Cup Sourdough Starter
• 1 tsp Vanilla Essence
• 2 ¼ Cups Flour
• ½ tsp Baking Powder
• ¼ tsp Baking Soda
• ½ – 1 Cup Chocolate Chips Dark/Milk/White or your best combo!

Instructions

• Cream together the butter and sugars.
• Add egg and mix through.
• Mix in (by hand) the sourdough starter and the vanilla essence.
• In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, and baking soda.
• Add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients.
• Mix to incorporate all of the flour but try not to over mix.
• Add in the chocolate chips and combine.
• Rest the dough at room temperature for 15-30 minutes.
• Preheat oven to 180℃ / 350℉.
• Scoop small balls of dough (about 2 teaspoons per ball) onto a lined cookie sheet.
• Flatten slightly with clean fingers or a fork.
• Bake for 12-15 minutes until slightly brown at the edges.
• Cool on a cooling rack.