Sourdough Discard Cookies (Easy Chocolate Chip)

Any basic cookie recipe can be converted to sourdough with a little practice. Today’s converted recipe is for sourdough discard cookies with chocolate chips – nothing wrong with a classic! Use this step by step, long ferment sourdough chocolate chip cookie recipe to get started, and then I challenge you to try another one. To help, I take you step-by-step through the sourdough conversion of a regular molasses cookie recipe I’ve never baked before. Read to the end to see how it worked!

I’ve had a lot of success (and a lot of failures) over the years with taking our favorite baked goods recipes and converting them to sourdough. Fortunately, the internet is full of smart people willing to share their techniques and I’ve learned a lot from them.

With a nod to those much wiser in the ways of sourdough, I’m happy to share with you our family’s go-to sourdough discard cookie recipe – sourdough chocolate chip!

When you’re ready, here are a few more sourdough discard recipes to try:

Sourdough Discard Sandwich Bread

Sourdough Discard Brownies – Long Ferment

Sourdough Discard Banana Bread

If you’d like to try your hand at converting your favorite cookie recipe to sourdough, scroll past the recipe to a step-by-step explanation of my method for doing that.

I also share a recipe for molasses cookies that I’ve never made before and how I experimented with converting it to sourdough for the purposes of this article.

I’m hopeful that will help you take the leap into experimenting with your own sourdough conversions!

To help you keep track of your sourdough experiments, recipes, ingredients, notes, and brainstorming, please join our member newsletter library to receive your free Sourdough Worksheets! You can download the sheets and start making great sourdough products today.
(These worksheets are for bread recipes and your cookie experiments and can be found on all our sourdough recipe posts.)

 

Sourdough Discard Cookies – the Secret!

The key, or secret if you will, to great sourdough discard cookies is to not overmix the dough. This is true whether you’re using discard or active sourdough starter.

• The more we agitate a sourdough dough or batter, the more the texture turns cake-like and then bread-like. Only mix sourdough cookie batters until the ingredients are incorporated. Then, stop mixing.

If you’re teaching your kids how to make sourdough discard cookies, this is the main thing to emphasize, especially if you have young bakers.

Sourdough Discard Cookies (Easy Chocolate Chip)

All my sourdough recipes are long-ferment, which means they sit on my counter to culture, or ferment, for at least 6 hours. When the weather is warm, I ferment my sourdough discard cookies in the refrigerator for 12 hours.

You and I can learn to convert all our favorite cookie recipes to sourdough for better nutrient absorption, less tummy upset, and more health benefits!

Sourdough Discard Cookie Recipe Notes

In cased you missed it while reading the recipe, here are a few notes to make your sourdough discard cookie recipe turn out even better. Remember, this is a long ferment recipe.

I typically mix my sourdough recipes by hand, but you can use an electric or stand mixer. Texture is important to watch carefully with sourdough, especially hydration.

• I find that when I mix by hand, I’m more in tune with the wetness and feeling of the dough. 

Remember not to overmix your dough, especially if you’re using an electric mixer.

You can include whole grain flours in your sourdough discard cookie recipes but they will change the texture of the batter, making it more loose. 

• You can use vanilla or vanilla paste for this recipe.

Fermentation & Refrigeration of Sourdough Cookies

Fermenting any sourdough recipe in the fridge will slow down the fermentation process and keep long ferment recipes from getting a pronounced sourdough tang. There are other benefits like:

• Putting the cookie dough in the refrigerator helps prevent the cookies from spreading while baking. 
• If you need to bake the cookies later, you can leave in the fridge forup to three days. Refrigerating sourdough doughs helps slow down the fermentation process, which buys you time when you’re busy.
• Also, for sourdough baked goods, that slower fermentation process will mean your cookies have a better cookie texture (instead of a sourdough bread texture).

Learn to replace regular, boring flour with delicious Kamut wheat in your chocolate chips cookies with Souly Rested.

To Get Started Converting Cookie Recipes to Sourdough

The first thing to do when converting your favorite cookie recipe to sourdough is to get out a pen and paper so you can take notes. When we’re adding sourdough starter to a recipe, we typically replace some flour and liquid from the recipe to account for the starter.

Pantry Mama can teach you how to do this really well with her article: How to Add Sourdough Discard to Any Recipe.

• Cookies are a less scientific to convert to sourdough by measuring because they don’t have an obvious liquid to replace.

Note: Not all cookie types can be successfully converted to sourdough, FYI. For example, meringue cookies can only be made as directed; sourdough would ruin a meringue cookie.

Furthermore, I haven’t attempted to convert every cookie recipe known to man to sourdough. I’m working my way through our family favorites, but I haven’t completed them all. Help a girl out; when you figure our how to convert your favorites, share them with us in the comments section!

–>>Don’t forget to get your FREE worksheets for keeping track of your results and ideas!<<–

My Method for Converting Cookie Recipes to Sourdough

Fair Warning: The following process will probably drive you detail-oriented types a little batty because my method is based more on experience and observation than it is on measurements and specific directions.

Having cautioned you with that, let’s get started.

1. Write out the cookie recipe you want to convert to sourdough. Try to pick one you’ve made several times so that you’re very familiar with its correct texture, smell, and taste.
2. Now, add to that recipe the amount of starter you’ll need. My general rule of thumb is to start with 1/2 cup of sourdough discard* for cookies. This is about 125 grams, if you’re measuring it on a kitchen scale. 
3. If eggs or milk are part of the original recipe, hold off adding them.
4. Mix all the other ingredients according to the recipe and look at the dough. Does it look like cookie dough should look? Slightly sticky but workable?**
5. If it’s too dry to incorporate the ingredients with a spoon, finish mixing with your bare hands. This will help you feel the texture better anyway.

*Sourdough discard will have less volume than active sourdough starter, FYI.

**Though this is a generalization, cookie dough tends to be a bit sticky (with butter and sugar) but still firm enough to form into a ball that will stick together.

• Cookie dough meant to be rolled out and cut with cookies cutters should be a bit more stiff than other cookie dough. It needs to be able to hold up under repeated rolling and cutting.

–>>Before you go any further, decide where you want to ferment the dough.<<–

Decide Where You Want to Ferment The Sourdough Discard Cookies 

As I mentioned, for health benefits, flavor, and rise, all my sourdough recipes are long ferment, which means at least 6 hours at room temperature. (Ideal fermenting temperature is between 65F/18C – 70F/21C).

• You may also choose to long ferment in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours. (The colder temperatures slow down the process of fermentation.)

Because most cookie recipes have egg, many people might be more comfortable fermenting them in the refrigerator. You also may decide you like the other benefits of chilling cookie dough as mentioned in the “Fermentation & Refrigeration of Sourdough Cookies” section.

If this is you, after completing step five above:

1. Add one egg or Tbsp. of milk (whichever your original recipe calls for) at a time until the consistency of your dough is correct.
2. Form the cookie dough into 12-36 balls and place on a covered baking tray or baker’s carrying case with a lid.
3. Ferment 12 hours in the refrigerator – I like to mix the cookie dough at night and bake in the morning.
4. Bake according to the recipe.

Fermenting Sourdough Discard Cookies on the Counter

Because I don’t have central heat and air, my house gets pretty warm in the summer. If I’m baking sourdough discard cookies in the summer, I always ferment them in the fridge.

• The heat of my house makes my sourdough recipes over-proof very easily. Once that happens, they’re hard to salvage and I have more to do with my time than babysit my cookies.

Having said that however, I don’t have a lot of extra space in my fridge! When the weather is more moderate, and even when it’s cold outside, I opt to ferment my sourdough discard cookies on the counter.

If you’d like to counter ferment your cookie dough, after completing step five above:

1. Add one egg or Tbsp. of milk (whichever your recipe calls for) at a time until the consistency of your dough is correct.
2. Form it into a ball and place it into a covered bowl.
3. Ferment it at least 6 hours on the counter*. 
4. Form the cookie dough into 12-36 balls and place on a covered baking tray or baker’s carrying case with a lid. Place the cookies into the fridge to chill for 1 hour.
5. Remove the cookie dough from the fridge and bake according to the recipe.

*You may ferment longer if your house is cold or if you like a sourdough tang in your cookies. Do NOT over-ferment, or over-proof.

• You’ll know the dough is heading towards over-proofing if it starts to bubble, look limp, start coming apart, or swell beyond doubling in size.

With cookie dough, 6 hours should really be enough at room temperatures between 65F/18C – 70F/21C.

A Note on Egg:

Some people might have concerns about salmonella contamination when allowing a dough containing egg to culture at room temperature. 

First, salmonella exists on the outside of the egg – it rests on the shell. If you wash your eggs thoroughly before use with hot water and soap, the likelihood of contamination is remote.

However, if you still have concerns, hold off putting egg in your pre-cultured dough. It may be more difficult to mix, FYI.

After fermentation, add one egg at a time until you have the right consistency for you dough. Then, proceed to add the baking soda or powder.

• Remember, you can also always ferment the sourdough discard cookies in the fridge.

Take Notes on Your Sourdough Discard Cookie Experiment

The last step is to simply bake them up and see what you think. Ask yourself some questions and write down the answers.

• Do my sourdough discard cookies taste good?
• How was the dough texture before fermenting? After fermenting?
• How easy were they to shape and bake?
• Did they hold their shape while baking?
• What should I try next – how would I tweak the recipe even further?

If improvements need to be made, the first things to look at are:

• Amount of flour
• Amount of milk and/or eggs

I usually remove 1/2 cup of flour from the recipe for the 1/2 cup of discard I put in. However, sourdough starter acts more like a liquid in a recipe, especially one as moisture sensitive as a cookie.

Sourdough bread can absorb a goodly amount of weird flour to water amounts and still produce a great loaf of bread. Cookies aren’t as forgiving!

A Few Helps for Sourdough Discard Cookies

If the texture ended up too sticky, either reduce the egg or milk, or increase the flour (I start with 1/2 cup).

• If they spread, try refrigerating the dough before you bake it. 
• If they’re too cake-like or bread-like, mix them less and/or chill them at last an hour.

For a great sourdough baking conversion chart, visit Little Spoon Farm’s article: Baking Conversion Chart.

Remember, take notes on the results and when you’re happy, write up a final copy of the recipe.

• Using a kitchen scale to measure ingredients will give you more precise results.
• As a final reminder, sourdough discard has less volume than fed sourdough starter.

Still confused?

Example of Experimental Sourdough Discard Cookie Conversion!

Ok, if that was enough to confuse you and not help you, how about a live example I produced just for this article. 

One thing I love about Love & Lemons Molasses Cookie Recipe is that it’s heavy on spice and not on sweet. To make it perfect for my family; all I have to do is add some sourdough and swap out a few other things that we prefer.

After following my steps up above, here’s the ingredients list that I was left with on my first attempt at converting this recipe to sourdough.

• 1/2 Cup Butter – you could also swap some of that out for coconut oil, if you want. I did because I ran out of room temperature butter in the middle of the recipe. I always forget to check that I have enough butter out!
• 1/3 Cup Coconut Sugar – you could also use the dark, brown sugar that Love & Lemons called for, especially if you like a bit more sweet. 

The butter and the sugar get creamed together. I always mix my sourdough discard cookies with a spoon at first, and then by hand to finish.

• 1/3 Cup Molasses – the yummy dark kind is best!
• 1 tsp. Vanilla – make your own vanilla so that you can control how strong it is. We like it strong!

The molasses and the vanilla get mixed into the creamed sugar. FYI, we use this method from Whole New Mom to make non-alcoholic vanilla extract.

• 1/2 Cup of Sourdough Discard – just mix until combined.

Now to Mix the Dry Ingredients

In a medium bowl, I then combined:

• 2 Cups Organic White Flour (Costco’s Kirkland label, 11.5% protein)
• 2 tsp. Cinnamon
• 2 tsp. Ginger
• 1 tsp. Nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp. Allspice
• 1/2 tsp. Sea Salt 

I only altered her original spice mix a little, mostly to add ginger since my family looooooves ginger in molasses cookies.

I then mixed the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.

• The original recipe called for 1 Tbsp. of water as needed, but with the sourdough discard, I didn’t need any at all. By a happy circumstance, this recipe converted perfectly to sourdough!

I mixed the ingredients, the texture was great, and I put it into a plastic bag, and right into the fridge to ferment overnight. For this experiment, I omitted the soda and powder and decided to try m ixing them into the fermented dough in the morning.

The Next Morning

I pulled the dough out of the fridge and set it on the counter, where it sat for 1 1/2 hours before it was workable enough for me to add in the last ingredients called for in the original recipe.

• 1 tsp. Baking Soda
• 1 tsp. Baking Powder

After that was mixed in, I divided the cookie dough and balled it for individual cookies. I got about 2 1/2 dozen cookies from roughly 1″ balls.

Note: The only obnoxious thing about working in baking soda or powder into an already mixed dough is that you have to be thorough or you end up with pockets or bits of unmixed soda or powder. It happens to the best of us, as shown below. See that little blip of unmixed soda? Yeah, that was me. 

The easiest way to prevent this from happening is to mix your cookie recipe up completely, form into balls, set into a covered pan, and refrigerate overnight. The baking soda and powder will still work to give extra rise to the cookie without you having to add them in after fermenting.

Experimentation is a great way to learn what works and what doesn’t – that’s the whole point! Never be afraid to try something new.

The good part is, these cookies turned out amazing! They’re spicy and not too sweet. 

• If you want a little more sweet in your finished cookie, use brown sugar instead of coconut sugar (like the original recipe suggests).
• Also, Love & Lemons recommends you roll your cookie dough balls in granulated sugar before placing them on your cookie sheet. This will give them just a touch more sweet.

Does it Always Work on the First Try?

Nope, it doesn’t always work on the first try! Below is pictured a Christmas Cookie recipe from Tasha Tudor that I’mtrying to switch to sourdough. I need to try it a few more times to get the right consistency – it ended up too wet. Although, the cookies were super tasty!

Do you have any recipes you’d like to share that you’re thinking about converting to sourdough? Have you already converted some and would like to tip off other readers? Just comment below!

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