How to Make the Best Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies

These sourdough chocolate chip cookies are everything that you want in a cookie!  They’re sweet, chewy, and full of chocolate chips.  Who could ask for more?

You may be thinking, sourdough in a chocolate chip cookie?  I promise, these don’t taste sour AT ALL!  The first time I tested out this recipe, I gave these to my whole family, and no one knew there was almost an entire cup of sourdough discard. Even my sometimes too honest 15 year old son!

In this recipe, the sourdough isn’t used as a leavening agent, it just replaces some of the flour and liquid.  You still use baking soda to leaven these chocolate chip cookies, the sourdough discard simply adds a few nutritional benefits to the cookies.

What You’ll Need to Make This Recipe

Equipment

• Stand Mixer (can use a hand mixer and mixing bowl as well)
• Kitchen Scale or Measuring Cups and Spoons
• Spatula
• Cookie Scoop
• Baking Sheets
• Cooling Rack

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (2 sticks or 227 g) Unsalted Butter Softened
• 1 cup (220 g) Sugar
• ½ cup (110 g) Packed Brown Sugar
• 2 Egg Yolks
• 1 tsp. (6 g) Salt
• 1 tsp. (6 g) Baking Soda
• 1 tsp. (5 g) Vanilla Extract
• Scant cup (140 g) Sourdough Discard
• 2 ½ cups (300 g) All Purpose Flour
• 2 cups (320 g) Semisweet Chocolate Chips

How to Make These Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies

1. Preheat oven to 350F degrees
2. Cream together butter, sugar, and brown sugar on medium speed in your stand mixer.
3. Add egg yolks and mix on medium until incorporated.
4. Add in salt, baking soda, and vanilla extract and mix on medium until incorporated.
5. Mix in sourdough discard on medium speed.  Be sure to not overmix.
6. Add in flour 1 cup at a time mixing on medium speed.
7. Stir in chocolate chips.
8. Place on cookie sheet and bake for 12-15 minutes.

FAQ’s

Do these cookies taste like sourdough?

No!  They taste like regular chocolate chip cookies.  You’d never know there was any sourdough in them by tasting them.

If they don’t taste any differently, why bother with using the discard?

First of all, who keeps a starter and doesn’t have a bunch of discard laying around that they don’t want to waste?  This is a great recipe for using up a lot of discard in one go.

Secondly, discard is just flour and water that has fermented fully and is no longer active.  Adding in discard replaces a little bit of flour and liquid in a regular cookie recipe and replaces it with fully fermented sourdough which brings all of the additional health benefits of using sourdough in your recipes.

What are the health benefits of adding sourdough discard to my chocolate chip cookies?

Sourdough is a fermented food, and you get additional health benefits such as probiotics as a result.  Additionally, because the flour in the discard is fully fermented, the beneficial bacteria have “eaten” the sugars out of the flour lowering the glycemic index.  These cookies certainly aren’t a low glycemic index food given the amount of additional sugar and flour added, but it’s lower than a traditional chocolate chip cookie recipe.

What’s the difference between sourdough starter and discard?

Sourdough starter is active.  This means it has been fed in the last 8 hours, is bubbly, sweeter smelling, and will float when placed in water.  Sourdough starter can be used as a leavening agent on its own.  Sourdough discard is starter that has not been fed recently, has very few if any bubbles, smells more sour, and will sink when placed in water.  Because sourdough discard is not active, you will need another leavening agent such as yeast or baking soda for your bakes to rise.  

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