Vegan Sourdough Cookies
Photography by Simeon Crofts
DIETARY – Vegan, Vegetarian, Nut-free, Dairy-free
Like much of the world right now, I have jumped on the sourdough bandwagon and have been lovingly nurturing a homegrown 100% hydration sourdough starter for the past month. While the bread it makes is fantastic, there is a lot of waste as you must discard most of your starter each time you feed it to prevent any harmful bacteria from growing. However, once your starter is healthy and active, after around 7-10 days, you can start baking with this discard instead of disposing of it. If you’re not ready to use the discard straight away, you can pop it into a jar in the fridge for up to three days.
Sourdough starter is a type of wild yeast made from fermented flour and water. It has a tangy, sour flavour – hence the name, that can impart a new dimension of flavour and texture into more than just bread. You can use sourdough discard to make crumpets, crackers, cakes, cookies, croissants, pizza dough and much more.
I personally love the robust flavour of sourdough starter with slightly bitter dark chocolate, which is why I decided to develop this recipe. But, of course, Deliciously Free is about adapting recipes to various dietary requirements, so I took on the challenge of creating a vegan sourdough cookie recipe. The result was a soft, chewy cookie packed with chocolate chunks and that delicious sourdough flavour that worked surprisingly well vegan – my taste testers didn’t believe these cookies were vegan at first! You can safely halve the ingredients if you want to make a smaller batch, or you can freeze any cookies you don’t want to eat straight away. You can also swap out dark chocolate for vegan milk chocolate or chocolate chips.
If you’re interested in making your own sourdough starter, I followed this easy step-by-step recipe by Edd Kimber. Alternatively, you can often purchase a starter from your local bakery or borrow some from a friend.
Vegan Sourdough Cookies
Ingredients:
- 100g vegan butter, melted
- 50g caster sugar
- 50g brown sugar
- 30g apple sauce
- ½ cup sourdough starter (the unfed discard)
- ½ tablespoon vanilla extract
- 125g plain flour
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1 cup chocolate chips
Method:
- Using a spoon, mix the melted vegan butter and sugars together.
- Add the apple sauce, sourdough starter and vanilla extract, and mix gently until combined.
- In a separate bowl, mix the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda together then carefully fold into your wet ingredients, being careful not to beat the mix (as this will result in a more cake-like cookie).
- Finally, stir in the chocolate chips. Put the dough in the fridge for 1 hour (you can also leave the dough overnight and bake the next day).
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and pre-heat the oven to 190°C (170°C Fan)/375°F/Gas Mark 5.
- Spoon out approx. 1½ tbsp of the mixture into your hands and quickly roll into a rough ball shape. Put on to your prepared baking sheet and flatten slightly with the palm of your hand.
- Bake the cookies for 7-8 minutes. They will still be very soft in the centre but will harden slightly as they cool.