Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies
These sourdough chocolate chip cookies are my best chocolate chip cookies recipe and is another recipe born out of my constant mission to use up sourdough starter (or sourdough starter discard). I felt like something sweet and I wanted to use up some dark chocolate chips I had in the pantry too so I thought why not cookies, I have not tried to make sourdough cookies yet. I managed to do some filming whilst baking these delicious morsels so if you want to watch my process video there is a link below:
https://youtu.be/nlU2Eak3LLI
Sourdough Starter Craze
I got the sourdough bug during coronavirus level 4 lockdown in New Zealand and amazingly, my sourdough starter is still alive 9 months later. Much of its survival it due to my curiosity with recipes using sourdough starter and sourdough starter discard; my mind was blown when I fully understood why people were so keen on sourdough starter recipes that did not resemble bread, yet also relieved that there was a productive way to use up sourdough starter that would otherwise be thrown in the rubbish.
The other common reason people search for sourdough starter recipes is because the genuinely like the sour taste that using sourdough starter in recipes gives the resulting food product. So far, I have this sourdough chocolate chip cookie recipe as well as my sourdough english muffins recipe which have made the grade and I am proud to share with the world. I am currently working on a sourdough pizza recipe which I will post on this blog soon and of course I have a sourdough cob loaf recipe, which I hope to be able to share soon too.
Needless to say I will be working on other starter recipes so I have good excuses to keep my sourdough starter alive. At the same time, hopefully I can keep my partner’s belly satisfied enough with the results that he continues to not mind having a large jar full of a living culture of yeasty bugs on our kitchen counter and 50kg flour in the pantry to keep it alive. Of course the recipes that work well will end up on this blog to inspire, motivate, encourage, impart knowledge onto others etc.
Useful Recipe Information
This recipe calls for the butter to be browned so these are like a brown butter chocolate chip cookies recipe. Admittedly, you still get delicious cookies if you just use melted butter. However, the added flavour you get from browning the butter is tantalizing on the taste buds and I recommend you give it a go but if browning the butter scares you or just ain’t your thing to do, no worries, just use melted butter. We all just want cookies – I get it, I get that way sometimes too!
When I make these I use semi-active sourdough starter. I know that my sourdough starter is most active about 4 hours after I have fed it, so when I say semi-active, I use starter that was fed about 2 hours ago. I use semi-active sourdough starter because I like a soft cookie but not a bread-like cookie. I suspect that if I used 4 hour old super active sourdough starter I would get super puffy cookies with super high centres. Conversely if I used sourdough starter discard, I suspect I would get a flatter, less puffy but chewier cookies. I guess it depends on your cookie preferences but there are some suggestions for you if you want to experiment and try to change the texture of these sourdough chocolate chip cookies.
I used 270g dark chocolate drops in these sourdough chocolate chip cookies, it is a good amount of chocolate and the cookies turned out really delicious, but feel free to use less. My partner commented that although they were really delicious, I think the comment was something along the lines of, “I can’t believe how good these are,” he also stated that less chocolate next time would make them better. Next time I make these, I will use quite a bit less, at a guess about 150-170g dark chocolate chips or drops and see how they turn out.
Placing the cookie dough into the fridge for an hour helps to firm up the dough and makes the dough easier to shape into cookies. However, you can omit this step and bake the cookies straight away. I just find the batter too sticky and soft to shape – but that is my preference. Another reason for rest the dough before baking is that with the sourdough starter, the mixture will continue to ferment and develop more of a sour taste the longer you rest it. The cookie dough will be absolutely fine after resting for 24 hours or overnight and the result will be a stronger and more defined sour taste that is distinctive of sourdough products.
When it comes to shaping each individual morsel of delicious cookie, I like to weigh out each little dough ball so I get fairly consistent sized cookies in the whole batch. Generally I go for 45g sized dough pieces. This also prevents fights between my two kids over whose cookie is bigger – they are all the same size. My kids like to help in the kitchen too and a great job for them to do is roll the weighed dough blobs into dough balls and squish them down. Then I like to place them onto the baking tray myself and make a few running repairs as and when required on the way.
Anyway, onto the recipe…
Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes 30
Thanks for the comments and for visiting my blog Healey.
Yes! Just what I was looking for. I don’t tell my fam that it has sourdough starter unless they comment, which they usually do. By now they know I put sourdough starter or discard in everything, ha ha.
Judy
Awesome Judy, glad you found my blog post useful. Thanks for visiting my blog, sounds like you are enjoying sneaking in sourdough starter or discard into as many recipes as possible too.