The Tastiest Chocolate Chip Cookies Are Made With A Throwaway Ingredient

Chocolate chip cookies are a total classic, but they also leave plenty of room for experimentation and innovation. From pudding to coconut flakes to bananas, there is no shortage of tasty ingredients you can add for a fresh take on the beloved dessert. The next time you're looking to try something new with your cookie recipe, look no further than this unlikely ingredient which, crucially, you're also probably looking to get rid of if you're an avid home baker.

Sourdough discard, i.e. the portion of your sourdough starter that's taken out before routine flour and water feedings, can have a second life here. Rather than throwing it away, add some to your cookie dough for a slightly tangy kick. Not only will you be avoiding food waste but you'll create cookies with a more complex flavor profile. Sourdough discard also ensures that your chocolate chip cookies will be moist, as it's made from fermented flour and water.

When adding sourdough discard to chocolate chip cookies, or any baked good for that matter, you will first need to do a bit of math. Since sourdough discard is made from flour and water, it should be used in place of some of the flour and liquid (water or milk) originally needed for your recipe. To make the substitution work, weigh the amount of sourdough discard you want to add to your chocolate chip cookies (around 100 grams is a good amount). 

Then, divide that number in half and subtract that amount of flour and liquid from your recipe. For example, if your recipe calls for 200 grams of flour and you're using 100 grams of sourdough discard, you should only use 150 grams of flour. These calculations may seem complicated at first, but there are plenty of sourdough discard cookie recipes out there to get you started if you're feeling intimidated by the baker's math and want to just follow along.

You may have some sourdough discard in your fridge that's been there for a while as you wait for an opportunity to use it. For the best results with baked goods, use sourdough starter within about a week. The discard will get sourer over time, which could negatively impact the flavor of your cookies. Make sure to always store your sourdough discard in the fridge to avoid this happening more quickly, too.

Depending on how often you feed your starter, you may have a lot more sourdough discard than you can use. After all, chocolate chip cookies are not something you typically bake every day. The good news is that there are tons of recipes that benefit from the addition of sourdough discard, and not all of them are sweet, which means that if your starter has been sitting for a while it might still be okay to use. 

The fermented mixture is also delicious in pizza dough, scallion pancakes, and savory biscuits to name just a few. In fact, once you start experimenting with sourdough discard, you'll find that you throw hardly any away.