Sourdough Shortbread Cookies

Simple shortbread cookies made with sourdough discard. These cookies are everything you want in a shortbread cookie, with the added tang of sourdough. You'll also find 20+ flavor variations so you'll never get bored!

Course Dessert, Snack

Cuisine American, English

Keyword Sourdough Discard

Prep Time 30

Cook Time 25

Total Time 55

Servings shortbread biscuits

Calories 2717kcal

Ingredients

250 g All Purpose Flour
120 g Powdered Sugar (icing sugar or confectioners sugar)
5 g Salt
185 g Butter Cold and diced
100 g Sourdough Starter or sourdough starter discard (cold)

Instructions

Add all ingredients to a food processor or Thermomix. Pulse until the butter is cut in and it forms a rough dough.
Tip the dough onto a clean surface and use your hands to form a log. Roll the log up in a piece of parchment paper and place in the fridge.
The shortbread dough can ferment in the fridge for up to 2 days with no problems. You can also put it in the freezer at this point (see notes).
Once the shortbread log has been in the fridge for 2 hours, preheat your oven to 160C and take the log out.
Slice the shortbread dough into slices around 1cm thick (around ½ inch). Place onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
Bake in oven at 160C (NOT fan forced) for around 25 minutes or until the shortbread is just starting to color (you want it to stay quite pale).
Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the tray before transferring to a cookie tin or glass jar to store.

Notes

Flour - if you want to create even "shorter" shortbread, replace 30g of All Purpose Flour with 30g of rice flour. This is optional and the shortbread will still be amazing without rice flour.

Use good quality ingredients - because sourdough shortbread has so few ingredients, you want to make sure the ingredients you do use are the best quality. You must use butter - there is no substitute for this in good shortbread. I love using my own homemade butter to make the shortbread biscuits extra special. Unsalted butter is best for this sourdough shortbread biscuit recipe.

Cold ingredients are best - it's best if your butter is straight out of the fridge. If you can, allow your sourdough discard to chill in the fridge a little before using it too. This will help stop your dough becoming sticky.

Don't over mix the dough - when mixing the shortbread dough, you want it to just come together. Try not to over mix the dough as you'll be able to bring it together more when you shape it into logs on the counter.

Don't over bake the sourdough shortbread - Remove it from the oven when it is just starting to color (it will go brown very quickly from this stage). This is one recipe where you don't really want "golden brown" - pale is good! Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet and they will crisp up. Once cool, remove them from the baking sheet to an airtight container.

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