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These chocolate chip cookies come with crisp edges, soft centers, and a depth of flavor that only sourdough discard can bring. Built on a method with serious social proof and fine-tuned through real experimentation, this cookie recipe will be your new favorite way to use your discard.

Sourdough discard chocolate chip cookies on a cooling rack with jars behind it.

THE SCIENCE OF How This Recipe Came to Be

When you decide to turn a recipe you already love into a sourdough version, the first question you have to ask yourself is: active starter or discard?

For me, discard was the clear answer for this one. My beloved, Instagram-viral, turn-Toll-House-diehards-into-converts classic chocolate chip cookies are on the flatter, chewier side– which is exactly what makes them so good– and introducing active starter would have risked making them cakey and puffed up. That’s a hard pass. Discard gives you that gentle tang and complexity without messing with the texture.

Once that was settled, the real work began, and you helped me do it in my Instagram stories. We had to tackle figuring out how to actually add discard to the recipe without throwing everything off balance.

Any time you add discard to a baked good, you have to account for the extra moisture and flour it brings, and with a 100% hydration starter (meaning equal parts flour and water by weight), every 100g of discard adds 50g of water and 50g of flour to your dough. Left unchecked, that would completely change the cookie.

So I started pulling moisture from other places in the recipe and worked backwards from there.

Someone's hand holding a sourdough chocolate chip cookie in it.

First, the butter: my original recipe calls for 1 cup (or 2 sticks) of melted butter. I know from my brown butter chocolate chip cookies that browning butter typically drives off about 20% of its weight in moisture through evaporation, so two sticks (1 cup) of butter yields roughly 45g of water lost.

That was a great start, but 45g of lost moisture would only justify using about 90g of discard (45g water + 45g flour), and honestly, that’s not enough to really taste the sourdough. I wanted it to actually mean something in the final cookie, not just be a way to technically use up your discard.

Then, the eggs: my original recipe uses 1 whole egg and 1 egg yolk. By swapping the whole egg for a second yolk and removing just the egg white, we can shed about 30 more grams of moisture. That change also comes with a bonus: it makes halving the recipe completely painless. Instead of trying to split a whole egg, you’re just working with yolks, which is a much easier calculation. It also leaves room for acquiring a smaller amount of discard.

The total math: between the browning butter and dropping the egg white, I’m removing about 75g of moisture from the recipe. That means I can add 150g of discard (which contains 75g of water + 75g of flour) and compensate by pulling 75g of flour from the dry ingredients.

This 150g of discard feels a whole lot more meaningful than the 90g we’d have landed on with only adjusting the butter. It feels substantial enough to bring flavor without being an astronomical amount that you’d need days and days worth of discard to fulfill.

Aerial photo of sourdough chocolate chip cookies on a cooling rack and one has been broken in half.

Once I did all of this math on paper, the real test was the bowl and then oven, and I’m happy to report that the result is a cookie that looks, spreads, and bakes exactly like the original, just with a little something extra going on in the flavor department.

It brings with it a richness and a depth that you can’t get or replicate with any other ingredient swap. It’s that unmistakable sourdough quality that you’ll notice but won’t be able to fully put your finger on.

HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL NEED: THE HIGHLIGHTS

If you want to read all the ins and outs of the whats and whys, my post dedicated to those reader-favorite chocolate chip cookies is the place you’ll want to go next. Let’s talk about some of the ingredients you’ll need that make these cookies so dang good and trusted by millions around the world every year.

BROWN BUTTER: we’ve already touched on this briefly, but this is a crucial ingredient for these cookies. I break down exactly how to brown butter in the instructions, but if you need any supporting visuals or explanations, I have a whole post dedicated to browning butter. In the brown butter version of my chocolate chip cookies, we add water back into the recipe to account for evaporation, but in this sourdough discard version, it’s unnecessary. Brown two sticks (1 cup) of unsalted butter, and don’t make any adjustments.

CORNSTARCH: this is one of those ingredients people always ask me about. It’s a small amount, but it makes a world of difference! Cornstarch helps soften the texture of the cookie, adding to the chewiness and softness of the center.

100% HYDRATION SOURDOUGH DISCARD: this recipe will not work with any other hydration of discard. As far as what kind of flour you use to feed your starter, that shouldn’t matter either. Personally, I use a 1:1:1 blend of all-purpose, whole wheat, and bread flour. Whatever flours you use will work perfectly. The hydration is what matters most here.

TWO KINDS OF CHOCOLATE CHIPS: my signature combo of chocolate chips is standard size milk chocolate chips and mini semi-sweet chocolate chips. You are, of course, welcome to use any kind of chips you’d like, even branching out to white or another flavor if you prefer. And if you say you don’t love milk chocolate, I urge you to try them in these cookies anyway. There’s a reason they are loved by so many…

Let’s Bake: Step-by-Step Instructions

This recipe is simple and straightforward, but you will have to build in time for chilling the dough (2 hours). I know, the wait is torturous, but it’s necessary. Be sure you’re buffering this time in, and if you can take any advice from me as someone who has made these cookies hundreds of times: if you make them at night, you can sleep through the chilling and it’s not as torturous.

Also, cookies for breakfast? Yeah. Let’s do that.

Start by browning the butter: since this only takes a few minutes and you’ll need to let it cool to room temperature before you use it, make the brown butter before you do anything else. Don’t forget to set a medium-sized heatproof bowl right next to your stovetop– you’ll want it within arm’s reach before you begin anything. Browning butter is a “don’t walk away” situation, so clear a few minutes and give it your full attention.

An aerial photo of a skillet of melting butter to make brown butter. There is a hand holding the handle of the skillet and a wooden spoon stirring the butter.

An aerial photo of a skillet of brown butter. There is a hand holding the handle of the skillet and a wooden spoon stirring the butter.

Whisk together the dry ingredients: while your butter cools, whisk together your flour, baking soda, cornstarch, and salt in a large bowl, then set it aside.

Start to bring the dough together: once your brown butter is cool enough to work with, whisk it together with your sourdough discard, brown sugar, and granulated sugar. Work it until there are no more sugar clumps, then whisk in the egg yolks and vanilla.

Browned butter and sourdough discard being stirred together in a bowl with a spatula.

Add the dry ingredients: pour the wet ingredients into the dry and fold everything together with a large spatula until just combined. Add the chocolate chips and stir until they’re evenly distributed throughout the dough.

Sourdough discard chocolate chip cookie dough in a bowl being stirred with a spatula.

Scoop your dough into balls: place your balls of cookie dough on a flat surface you can slide into the fridge– a baking sheet, a large plate, whatever works. You can chill the whole bowl of dough instead, but fair warning– this dough is really hard to scoop once it’s cold, so I always recommend scooping first. Pro tip: I like to stash some away in the freezer at this point for future use!

A closeup of sourdough chocolate chip cookie dough.

Sourdough discard chocolate chip cookie dough balls on a baking sheet.

Bake the cookies: when you’re ready to bake, position a rack in the middle of your oven and preheat it for at least 20 minutes. Arrange no more than 8 dough balls per sheet– they need room to spread! If you want that bakery-style look, press a few extra chocolate chips onto the tops and sides of each ball before they go in (you can also do that again after).

Aerial photo of sourdough chocolate chip cookies on a cooling rack with a bowl of discard with a spatula in it.

Tips for Success

Do not use piping hot brown butter: your browned butter doesn’t have to be totally room temperature, but you don’t want it piping hot anymore. This eliminates your risk of cooking the eggs and/or melting the chocolate chips. I like to let it sit for about 10 minutes, then mix it with the discard and the sugars which will help bring down the temperature even more. Check the temperature (by touch) again before proceeding with the eggs.

Weigh your flour: I say this for literally every recipe, but it’s especially important here. Too much or too little flour and your cookies won’t act the way they are intended to. A kitchen scale takes all the guesswork out of it and is the single biggest thing you can do to set yourself up for success.

Everything should be at room temperature, including your discard: cold discard straight from the fridge can cause your butter to seize up when you mix them together, which throws off the whole dough. Pull your discard (and eggs) out ahead of time and let them come to room temp before you start. I like to aim for about 30-45 minutes for this.

There is a whole lot of love and dedication that went into making this recipe perfect, and I have to thank all of you for helping me do that. You gave me feedback in real time in my Instagram stories when we went through this process together, and I’m thrilled that a recipe I (and you!) love so much can make its way into the sourdough space.

That said, consider using this discard version to make other beloved versions of these cookies: chocolate chip cookie bars (no chilling!) and spiced chocolate chip cookies.