Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies [soft + chewy]

Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies are an essential sourdough recipe to have in your collection. Not only do these chocolate chip cookies taste amazing, they will make your kitchen smell incredible, use up your sourdough discard and there’s no brown butter in sight, making them simple to make with just a bowl, whisk and spoon (no stand mixer necessary).

These sourdough discard chocolate chip cookies can be made with active sourdough starter or sourdough discard. They’re soft with a chewy texture in the middle and crisp edges (they’re never cake-like) and will disappear from your cookie jar in record time (seriously I always make a double batch of these)!

What Makes This Recipe Different?

No Brown Butter – Most sourdough chocolate chip cookie recipes use brown butter. I’m a busy mom who doesn’t have time for brown butter (unless it’s whipped brown butter to spread on my sourdough toast). These cookies just use melted, salted butter, but still have the best flavor!

Long Fermented Cookie Dough – These cookies are best when the dough is fermented overnight in the fridge. Take the time to your sourdough starter to work its magic.

Totally Customizable – You can customise this chewy sourdough discard chocolate chip cookie recipe with a few tweaks including changing the type of chocolate chips that you use, adding nuts or even a sprinkle of flaky salt (I’ve added a tonne of variation ideas further down the page!). You could also make these cookies into a sourdough cookie skillet or change them up into these sourdough chocolate chip cookie bars or even sourdough brookies. You might also like these sourdough oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

Ingredients

• All Purpose Flour – you want to use flour with a lower protein for the best cookies (I know, you are used to using high protein bread flour for sourdough bread) but trust me on this, stick with all purpose flour!
• Baking Soda – not to be confused with baking powder.
• Corn Starch – a little cornstarch will give you a softer cookie (cornstarch is called cornflour in Australia and the UK. It’s the white powder you add to gravy or sauces to thicken them, not yellow cornmeal). Cornstarch helps the cookies to bake soft and stay soft.
• Salt – Just a pinch of regular cooking salt in the cookie dough and then you can add some flaky salt to the top of the cookies if you want to before baking.
• Chocolate Chips – I always use semisweet chocolate chips for this recipe (I make so many of these sourdough chocolate chip cookies that I buy my chocolate chips in 2kg bags from Costco!).
• Sourdough Starter or Sourdough Discard – you can use either active sourdough starter or discard for this recipe, it doesn’t make any difference to the final outcome.
• Melted Butter – I’ve used salted butter, melted and then allowed to cool for a little bit so it’s not too hot when it’s mixed with the eggs. You can use unsalted butter if you prefer.
• Sugar – You’ll need a mix of granulated white and brown sugar for these gooey sourdough chocolate chip cookies. Use dark brown sugar for extra sweetness.
• Egg + Egg Yolk
• Vanilla Extract

How To Make Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies

Sourdough chocolate chip cookies are pretty easy to make. Most of the time is waiting for the dough to chill in the fridge! It’s a little bit like making delicious sourdough bread! You’ll often find me in the kitchen mixing up a batch of these before bed (I’m a bit of a night owl). They ferment overnight and can be baked the next day.

Place some of the dry ingredients (all purpose flour, baking soda, corn starch, salt and chocolate chips) into a large bowl and combine. Set this aside.

Now in a separate bowl, combine sourdough starter, melted butter, brown sugar, white sugar, egg + egg yolk and vanilla extract. Stir together until they resemble runny caramel.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and bring together using a spatula. Once you’ve brought the dough together, cover it in plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator. It’s best to refrigerate for 24 hours if you can (but anything from around 12 to 24 hours is fine).

The next day, when you are ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 165ºC (330ºF) and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Use a cookie scoop or large spoon to scoop out balls of dough. I’ve used a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop for this recipe. Place the dough balls onto the prepared baking sheets.

Place the cookies into the oven for 13 to 16 minutes or until they are golden brown on top but still molten in the centre. The baking time may differ depending on your oven.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the tray for around 10 minutes. The cookies will continue to bake for a few minutes after they are removed from the oven and will firm up as they cool. After 10 minutes, carefully transfer to a wire rack and allow them to cool completely. Don’t over cook these cookies. Remove them from the oven when the centre still looks wet or they will be too dry when they cool.

Tasty Flavor Variations

There are lots of variations that you can make with these cookies. Here are a few of my family’s favorites:

• Add 100g of roasted peanuts along with the chocolate chips for a delicious peanut twist.
• White Chocolate, Cranberry & Macadamia – Replace the milk chocolate chips with 50g each of white chocolate chips, dried cranberries and macadamia nuts.
• Add a few tablespoons of your favorite chai spice or pumpkin spice to the mixture when you mix the dry ingredients for a spiced twist (seriously so good!).
• Swap the milk chocolate chips for dark chocolate chips and sprinkle them with flaky sea salt before baking.

You might also enjoy these sourdough cowboy cookies full of sweet chocolate chips, pecans, rolled oats and sweetened coconut flakes or turn these chocolate chip cookies into sourdough s’mores cookies. Check out these other sourdough discard recipes and other sourdough cookie recipes too!

Storing & Freezing

You can keep these cookies fresh for about 3 or 4 days in an airtight container (although they don’t last long in my house). I find they stay freshest in a glass jar (I absolutely love having chewy sourdough chocolate chip cookies in my glass cookie jar). Avoid storing them in a plastic container.

These can be frozen too. I freeze baked cookies on a cookie tray and then pop into a ziplock bag. That way I can take out a couple to pop into lunchboxes when I need them. They defrost well.

You can also freeze the cookie dough balls in a freezer-safe bag and bake cookies as you want them. I freeze the dough into balls and then place into a ziplock bag so I can grab out a handful as I want them. Pop the frozen balls onto a baking tray and let them soften a little before baking as per normal. You might also enjoy these other sourdough cookie recipes that freeze really well.

Frequently Asked Questions

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