I’m about to change your life with these browned butter sourdough chocolate chip cookies. Cakey, chewy, thick, and filled with chocolate chunks. YUM.

Browned butter sourdough chocolate chip cookies freshly baked on the baking sheet.

I have been trying to perfect my sourdough chocolate chip cookies for a while now.

Sourdough has many benefits- the biggest one being that foods made with active sourdough starter have significantly less gluten than foods made without. This is due to the fermentation action from the good bacteria and wild yeast that is abundant in an active sourdough starter. Sourdough bread STILL contains gluten, however, so if you have celiac disease or are gluten intolerant, please do not go crazy on the sourdough bread, at least not until you’ve had a discussion with your doctor. I probably could not accurately describe the sourdough science in my own words, and I am also fearful of leading people astray when it comes to health, so please read this article from Healthline below to learn all about what happens to gluten when you use sourdough in your recipes:

Is Sourdough Bread Gluten-Free? (healthline.com)

All that to say, I was eager to add sourdough to any recipe I could so I could eat foods that were low in gluten and also delish.

The first sourdough cookie batch I tried, the dough was so runny all the cookies baked together on the sheet pan. Disappointing, to say the least. The next time, I added more flour and they got a little better, but still flattened out and had a crumbly texture I really didn’t care for. Once again, disappointed. The flavor from these cookies was great, and I especially loved the sour taste in the raw dough (listen, I know it’s dangerous or whatever. You gotta live a little sometime). The texture and body of the cookies, though, were not my type at all.

I’m a cakey cookie girl. I want my cookie to be thick, chewy, and soft but NOT crumbly. So, I set out to make the world’s first cakey sourdough cookie. (Dramatic? Yes. But I am nothing if not dramatic.) But the thing is, I thought I was just going to have to keep adding flour to the recipe until I found the texture I was looking for.

Turns out, the solution was something entirely different.

It occurred to me that maybe browned butter would be a nice addition to the sourdough chocolate chip cookie recipe I had been tweaking for a while. So, the next time I whipped up some cookie dough, I browned the butter instead of just simply melting it in the microwave.

Woman stirring, browning butter on the stove

I then proceeded with my sourdough cookie recipe like normal. Since this was the first time I was doing the browned butter modification, I decided to experiment a little more. As soon as I finished the cookie dough, I rolled 12 dough balls with my hands, popped them onto the cookie sheet, and baked them right then.

With the rest of the dough, I rolled dough balls and then placed them on an avocado-oiled plate, covered them in foil, and set them in the refrigerator to long-ferment for 24 hours.

I wanted to see what the difference in taste and texture would be between an immediately-baked batch and a long-fermented batch.

Keep reading to find out the experiment’s results 🙂

I noticed, upon rolling and baking that first batch of cookies, that the consistency of this dough was much different than the other sourdough chocolate chip cookies I’d made.

The previous doughs had been loose, somewhat runny, and wet. Instead of being able to roll the dough into balls, I had scooped up dollops with a spoon and dropped them onto the cookie sheet. This current dough I had made was thick and stiff, not anywhere near runny. When I rolled the dough into balls (with my hands! not spoons!), they did not deflate and collapse all over the cookie sheet. They held their shape.

Chocolate chip cookie dough still in the bowl with a rubber spatula

Hopeful, I baked them at 350 degrees for about 17 minutes.

When I took them out of the oven, I was elated.

The cookies STAYED thick. They didn’t collapse, spread, and run into each other. When I broke one of the cookies in half to check out the texture, I was delighted to find that it did not crumble.

This was everything I wanted for my sourdough cookies- a thick, cakey, chewy texture rocky with chocolate chips *drooling emoji*. Right then and there, this recipe became the browned butter sourdough chocolate chip cookies recipe OF MY DREAMS. I’m talking one-hundred and fifty-two insights INTO MY SOUL. #iykyk

Browned butter sourdough chocolate chip cookies on a baking sheet fresh from the oven.

So, what about the long-fermented cookies? Dude.

After long-fermenting for over 24 hours, I popped those fermented suckers into the 350 degree oven and let the magic happen.

Check out the differences between the two types of cookies below- immediately-baked on the left and long-fermented on the right.

Two cookies broken in half, held side by side to compare the textures and colors

While the differences may not be drastic, they are for sure evident, especially after tasting each cookie. The long-fermented cookie had a stronger sourdough flavor, as well as a denser, more moist crumb. The immediately-baked cookie had a milder flavor, and its crumb was somewhat looser.

Overall, both cookies were delicious and I would never turn my nose up at either. HOWEVER, there was a definite winner in my book.

And the award goes to- the long-fermented cookie.

I get it, sometimes you just want a cookie immediately. No shade to anyone who bakes this dough right away, but I think you would miss that delicious sourdough flavor. Also, without long-fermenting the dough, you will lose the benefit of the reduced gluten content. So I encourage you to play the long game with these cookies and mix them up 24 hours ahead of time. You won’t be sorry! Plus you can eat a little cookie dough to tide you over till baking-day.

So, what makes the difference in this sourdough cookie recipe?

Why wasn’t this dough a cookie soup, like the others? The browned butter!!

A good sourdough cookie recipe is hard to find for one reason- a normal cookie recipe does not call for water. Sourdough starter is equal parts water and flour, and when you want to add sourdough starter to a recipe, you are adding extra water and flour to that recipe. So if you were to add 100 grams of sourdough starter to a recipe, you would be adding an additional 50 grams of flour and 50 grams of water. The flour part isn’t a huge issue when it comes to cookies. The water, however, is a different story. Since a usual cookie recipe doesn’t call for water, the consistency of the sourdough cookie dough tends to be way runnier than you’d want. To make the cookie dough better, there needs to be a way to compensate for the extra water.

When you brown butter, you are cooking the milk solids in the butter, causing the golden brown color. While those milk solids are browning, however, the water is evaporating from the butter. So when you swap the regular melted butter for browned butter in a sourdough cookie recipe, you are compensating for the extra water in the sourdough starter. A cooked down, concentrated form of butter that contains less water + a sourdough starter that is equal parts water and flour = cakey, chewy, low gluten (if you long fermented), delish cookies! AKA The browned butter sourdough chocolate chip cookies.

HOW COOL IS THIS SCIENCE!