My Top 5 Sourdough Cookie Recipes by Make It Dough (2024)

FAQs

What happens if you put too much sourdough starter in your dough? ›

If you have too much starter compared to the additional flour and water you're adding, your hungry starter consumes all the nutrients and then it's not as bubbly.

Think of sourdough starter as a natural leavener, and in many cases, a way to cultivate the wild yeast that exists naturally in flour and in the air, and convert it to something that you can use to make bread (or whatever else) rise.

Sourdough is a great way to make your baked goods a little healthier. This way, the flour will at at least boost your nutrient intake by undergoing a slight fermentation with the sourdough starter.

If you don't discard your sourdough starter, it will grow too big and be unmanageable. Not to mention you will go through an unmentionable amount of flour.

An overfed starter can be too diluted and it will be very watery. Your workers are there, they are just overwhelmed with too much food and water. When this happens, first leave it out in the warmth overnight. In the morning discard all but a tablespoon of starter and feed it.

Cornstarch helps product soft and thick cookies. Using more brown sugar than white sugar results in a moister, softer cookie. An extra egg yolk increases chewiness. Rolling the cookie dough balls to be tall and lumpy instead of wide and smooth gives the cookies a bakery-style textured thickness.

Popping your dough in the fridge allows the fats to cool. As a result, the cookies will expand more slowly, holding onto their texture. If you skip the chilling step, you're more likely to wind up with flat, sad disks instead of lovely, chewy cookies. Cookies made from chilled dough are also much more flavorful.

If you don't want to put the dough in the fridge for a cold ferment, you can leave it to proof on the counter for a little while. You do need to be careful not to let it over ferment. Ideally, you want the temperature to be on the cooler side (no more than 21C / 69.8F). Let the dough relax into the banneton.

stir your starter in between feedings - try stirring it twice in between feedings and really give it a chance to get oxygen into the mix. This will help to activate your starter without too much effort.

How to tell if sourdough starter is bad? ›

Typical signs of food spoilage and mold include pink, orange, or green colors, white fuzzy spots, or sometimes areas that are darker with white areas on top. If you see any of these signs, I would recommend throwing your starter away and creating a new one.

The type of flour used — all-purpose, whole wheat, rye — can affect the nutritional content of sourdough bread, says Wee. But generally speaking, sourdough bread is a healthy option and can be eaten regularly as part of a nutritious, balanced diet.

You can always use this discard by directly mixing it into a dough for baking. Your discard, as long as it's in good shape, will leaven any bread dough just as well. The discard is just like a levain you would make for a recipe. The only difference is it's the same makeup as your starter.

Culinary-wise, sourdough discard can be used in various recipes such as pancakes, waffles, muffins, sourdough pasta and quick breads like sourdough banana bread to impart a tangy flavor, reduce food waste, and add complexity of flavor to your baked goods.

Overworked sourdough can become tough and lose its ability to rise properly. If your dough feels tight and is difficult to shape, it might be overworked. Remember, sourdough requires a gentle touch and should not be kneaded as vigorously as other types of bread dough.

This is just a sign that your starter has over fermented. Just remove the hooch before you feed your starter again. You can also stir it in if the layer of hooch is rather thin, however bear in mind that it might take longer (more feeds) to reduce the acidity of your starter.

You can use the 1:1:1 ratio in many situations when scaling your sourdough starter. Even if you only had 10g of starter and you wanted 200g of starter, you'd just have to feed it at 1:10:10 which would mean adding 100g of flour and 100g of water to that 10g of sourdough starter.

A sourdough starter is used to seed fermentation in new dough when baking bread and is responsible for leavening (making rise) and flavoring a loaf of sourdough bread.