Sea Salt and Dark Chocolate Chip Sourdough Cookies
These thick, chewy, soft-baked, bakery-style cookies take classic chocolate chip cookies to the next level. Browned butter and extra salt enhance the warm caramel notes from the brown sugar, while sourdough discard provides a subtle tang right at the end. Rich dark chocolate studded throughout and flaky sea salt sprinkled on top give pops of flavor in every bite that will wake up your taste buds.
Originally, I wasn’t going to post a sourdough discard chocolate chip cookie recipe. My son had found an excellent Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe by Kate Freebairn of The Pantry Mama. It can be made with discard or active starter and when we made them in our kitchen they came out exactly as advertised with crispy edges and chewy centers.
I might have left things exactly like that, but my daughter’s gymnastics team was running a fundraiser and had requested volunteers to donate baked goods. Me being me, I volunteered to provide all the baked goods. I decided to make Mom’s (Texas) Brownies decorated with fall-themed sprinkles and my “Butterbeer” Blondies. It occurred to me that with the brownies being chocolate on chocolate and the blondies having peanut butter in them, it might be a good idea to bring a third item that offered a somewhat more neutral middle ground.
Since I committed to bringing three large batches of goodies, I wanted that third recipe to be something I could pull together pretty quickly. I remembered the sourdough chocolate chip cookie recipe and we had some discard on hand so I thought “perfect!” But again, me being me, if I was going to bring something I baked to be sold, I wanted to put my own stamp on it and give it just a little bit of a makeover.
- First, although Kate mentions in her post that she had tested with browned butter and felt like there was minimal to no flavor reward for the extra effort, I browned the butter. The main difference is that I add dry milk powder when browning butter which dials up the toasty, nutty, caramelized notes and makes an excellent flavor foundation for the dough.
- I bumped up the total amount of chocolate just a little bit and I opted for a dark-to-bittersweet chocolate instead of the semi-sweet. I think this gives the chocolate more presence in the flavor profile and that hint of bitterness contrasts nicely with the sweet caramel base notes of the cookie.
- I wanted the cookies to be noticeably salted. I think that a generous amount of salt balances the sweetness of the dough and enhances the flavor of the chocolate. Kate’s original recipe calls for 2g of salt (about ⅓ tsp if using fine-grain salt) and mentions flaky sea salt on top as a variation. She also uses salted butter, so depending on the butter, the total salt content would be roughly equivalent to ⅔ tsp of fine salt. I opted for 6g (about 1 tsp) of fine sea salt in the dough and a generous sprinkle of sea salt flakes on top.
- Finally, I increased the vanilla from 5g (~1 tsp) to 15g (~1 tbsp). I wanted the vanilla to have a strong aromatic presence in the dough—both its flavor and aroma help support and tie together the browned butter, rich chocolate, and caramel notes running throughout the cookies.
I would consider this to be a very light adaptation of Kate’s original recipe. I would absolutely recommend trying her original recipe, but I thought that the changes I made provided a significant enough flavor shift that the modified version of the recipe was worth sharing. I hope you’ll give them a try and see for yourself—and when you do, let me know how it goes.
Sea Salt and Dark Chocolate Chip Sourdough Cookies
Equipment
Ingredients
Method
- Place the butter and milk powder in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cook until it is golden brown and smells nutty.180 g (12 tbsp) butter, 10 g (2 tsp) milk powder
- Remove from the heat and immediately whisk in the cold water. (This replaces lost moisture and stops further browning). Set aside to cool slightly.30 ml (2 tbsp) water
- Whisk the flour, baking soda, cornstarch and salt in a large mixing bowl. Stir in the chocolate chips and set aside.350 g (2 ¾ cups) flour, 3 g (¾ tsp) baking soda, 6 g (2 tsp) corn starch, 6 g (1 tsp) salt, 267 g (1 ½ cups) chocolate chips
- In a separate large bowl, combine the sourdough starter, browned butter, brown sugar, sugar, egg, egg yolk and vanilla. Whisk together until smooth and syrupy.100 g (3 ½ oz) sourdough starter, 165 g (¾ cup) brown sugar, 100 g (½ cup) sugar, 1 egg, 1 egg yolk, 15 g (1 tbsp) vanilla extract
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir together just until a wet dough forms with no dry ingredients visible. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hour and up to 48 hours.
- Preheat the oven to 330°F and line two large cookie sheets with parchment paper.
- Use a #30 cookie scoop to portion out balls of dough. Place the cookie dough balls onto the prepared baking sheets leaving about 2 inches between them to allow the cookies room to spread.
- Using your palm or the flat bottom of a glass, lightly flatten the tops of the dough balls. Sprinkle the top each cookie with a generous pinch of flaky sea salt.flaky sea salt
- Bake in the preheated oven for about 12 minutes or until they are golden on the edges, but the middle still looks slightly underdone.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the pans for about 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.
Private Notes
Nutrition
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