Soft-Baked Sourdough Chocolate Cookies

When you have leftover sourdough, there’s no reason to throw it away. It not only tastes great in many dishes but is also a healthy addition to most baked goods, including cookies…

I started using my leftover sourdough for various things a few years ago because it simply became too expensive to throw away so much einkorn flour. Anyone familiar with the price per kilogram of einkorn knows it’s around 45–75 DKK per kg, so you don’t just throw away 50–100 g of flour a day when you need to refresh your sourdough starter. If you refresh your sourdough with 50 g, you’ll use about 1,500–1,550 g of flour per month to refresh it; if you use more than 100 g, as I often do, that’s about 3 kg, and yes, there’s often a lot left over—which is a huge waste if you throw out half of your sourdough starter on all the days you’re not baking with it.

So… I’ve spent quite a bit of time figuring out ways to use up the leftover dough, and these cookies are just one of the many recipes I’ve created using sourdough.

This dough smells amazing, kind of like student bread (without the junk), and it gets more flavorful depending on how long you let it rise. I prefer 2–3 hours at room temperature and a couple of hours in the fridge—it’s a matter of taste—and as long as it gets a few hours, the dough will be slightly leavened.

Soft-Baked Sourdough Chocolate Cookies

If you have sourdough starter, there’s always a little bit left over that’s hard to use up, so it often ends up in the trash. Which is a shame, since that small amount can be used in so many other things—and here I’m using it in a recipe from our former store, Hygge Gourmet. I’ve halved the sugar content and added my sourdough starter instead, which gives it a delicious hazelnut aroma and flavor. If you let the dough rest until the next day, it will ferment slightly and become healthier, as this reduces phytic acids and other compounds. However, you can easily just let the dough rest for a couple of hours and bake it if you don’t have that much time.

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Prep Time: 25 minutes minutes

Baking time per sheet: 6 minutes minutes

Total Time: 53 minutes minutes

Course: cookies

Cuisine: Sweet Treats

Keyword: chocolate, cookies, sourdough

Quantity: 45 Cookies

Author: Belle

Equipment

• 1 Bowl
• 1 Danish whisk(which is a wooden spoon with a hole in it) A regular wooden spoon works just fine, too, but a Danish whisk is fantastic for hand-mixed cakes and bread.

Ingredients

• 150 g Melted butter (For once, I'm using salted butter, since it gives this cookie an extra nice flavor)
• 100 g Raw cane sugar (I use Dulcita or Panela)
• 60 g Unrefined cane sugar (I use Demerara)
• 20 g Homemade Vanilla Sugar (The recipe is on the blog.)
• 1 egg + 1 plum
• 40 g Sourdough (does not need to be enabled)
• 300 g Freshly Ground Einkorn (You can also use spelt; I use whole-grain spelt in this recipe)
• 30 g Cocoa Powder (Unsweetened, with no additives)
• 3 g Baking Soda
• 1/2 tsp Fleur de Sel (If you usually use fine salt, you shouldn't use more than 1/4 teaspoon; Fleur de Sel works best here)
• 100 g Dark Chocolate (I use a 55% that contains no lecithin, artificial flavors, or refined sugar)
• 100 g Light Chocolate (I use a 42% that contains no lecithin, artificial flavors, or refined sugar)

Instructions

• Melt the butter and let it cool (to 38–40 degrees). Pour it into a mixing bowl and add raw cane sugar, demerara sugar, vanilla sugar, eggs, and egg yolks.
  
• Whisk it together.
  
• Add the sourdough starter and whisk.
  
• Whisk until the mixture has lightened in color.
  
• Measure the flour, baking soda, fleur de sel, and cocoa into a bowl.
  
• Mix it together with a spoon.
  
• Add half of it to the batter and whisk it in.
  
• Add the other half of the flour and make sure it's thoroughly mixed in.
  
• Chop the chocolate into large pieces and add it to the mixture.
  
• Fold in the chocolate until it’s well distributed. Let the mixture rest for at least 1 hour at room temperature, or preferably 3 hours. If you have plenty of time, you can then refrigerate it until the next day (so the dough has matured/risen the old-fashioned way).
  
• Roll the dough into 20-gram balls and place them on a piece of paper in the freezer until ready to bake.
  
• Preheat the oven to about 165 degrees (not convection) and bake each sheet for about 6–7 minutes.
  
• Let the cookies cool on a wire rack until they are completely cool, then place them in a jar or a cookie jar lined with parchment paper.

Enjoy these little cookies with a glass of cold raw milk, with your coffee, or as a gift for someone you care about. Have a blessed day.

Love

P.S. All posts on this blog are written and photographed by Belle Frost; no AI was used to generate content, and all copyright belongs to Maison Frost.