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Easy to bake sourdough discard chocolate chip cookies with chocolate studded throughout, and a soft delightful vanilla brown sugar cookie dough

What is sourdough discard?

If you’ve ever nurtured a sourdough starter, you’ll know that regular feeding means removing a portion from the jar, and this is known as sourdough discard. While bread might be the main motivation for keeping a starter alive, that “discard” is far too good to waste. One of the most delicious ways to use it? Soft, chewy sourdough discard chocolate chip cookies.

Sourdough discard is simply unfed starter. It still contains flour and water, along with all the wonderful flavour developed through fermentation. When added to cookie dough, it brings a subtle tang that balances the sweetness of the chocolate and sugar, creating a richer, more complex flavour than classic chocolate chip cookies.

Whenever you feed your starter, whether you’re preparing to bake bread or just maintaining it, the portion you remove can go straight into a cookie recipe. It may be called “discard,” but it’s still perfectly usable sourdough starter, and it works beautifully in sweet bakes like cookies.

Baking cookies with sourdough discard

Sourdough discard can be incorporated into many baked goods, but it works especially well in chocolate chip cookies. Because discard already contains both flour and liquid, it naturally becomes part of the structure of the dough. In most cases, only small adjustments to flour or butter are needed, making these cookies surprisingly simple to prepare.

The discard adds moisture, which helps create a soft, chewy centre, while the fermentation brings a gentle depth of flavour that enhances the chocolate rather than overpowering it. The result is a cookie that feels familiar but tastes just a little more special. It’s an easy, satisfying way to reduce waste and turn something that might have been thrown away into a batch of bakery style cookies with crisp edges, gooey centres, and a subtle sourdough twist.

A simple cookie recipe

These cookies are softly baked how I want them to be, and often you’ll find something containing discard like this will be naturally softer. They are moreish and snackish and I love them

Butter – I use block unsalted butter for these as I find it helps, but a baking spread does also work
Sugar – I love light brown soft sugar or dark brown soft sugar for these
Sourdough – I used fridge cold and unfed starter – fed starter would also work
Egg – I always use a medium egg when baking
Vanilla – optional, or swappable to another flavour
Flour – I use plain flour as I don’t want too much raising agent from self raising flour
Raising agent – I like to use bicarbonate for the texture
Salt – a little sprinkle of sea salt goes a long way in cookies like this
Chocolate – chopped up bar of chocolate, or chocolate chips, both work well

Baking the cookies

The natural gluten texture of a sourdough starter can sometimes make it look weird when you are mixing up a cookie dough, but you need to trust the process as it’s worth it.

I mix the butter, and sugar together, and then add the egg and vanilla and starter. I like to mix these together quite well so that the ingredients are well distributed, before adding in the flour, bicarbonate and salt. The cookie dough looks a little soft in comparison to other cookie recipes such as my NYC Cookies, but it’s meant to be.

I used a 5cm cookie scoop when portioning the cookies, but you can also just use tablespoons. The dough is sticky so it’s hard to portion with your hands. Add to lined trays, chill the dough, and then bake in a preheated oven. They will soften once cooled, but trust me, they’re gloriously delicious