Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

These sourdough chocolate chip cookie bars are absolutely irresistible. They're like the best sourdough chocolate chip cookies you've ever had, only better because they're thicker, fudgier, softer. They're just amazing and you're going to want to bake them on repeat! Plus these bars have a few little extras to make them pop!

If you're looking for similar recipes, then you might also like to try these sourdough sugar cookie bars, sourdough blondies and sourdough brownies.

Why You'll Love This Recipe!

They're Just So Good - These need to come with a warning ... do not bake them unless you are prepared to eat the whole tray. They are that good! Honestly, these kept disappearing so fast when I was testing this recipe!

No Rolling - There's no rolling cooking balls or trying to fit everything on trays, you just plop the mixture into a pan and bake! You can even ferment it overnight if you prefer (and this does make the bars taste even more amazing).

Use Active Starter or Sourdough Discard - like most sourdough discard recipes, you can choose to use active starter or sourdough discard! So easy!

Ingredients

• All Purpose Flour - no bread flour required here, just good old all purpose flour.
• Baking Soda - this is used to give the cookie bars a little lift, but not too much. I have chosen to to use baking soda, rather than baking powder because I want the bars to be chewy, rather than cake like.
• Corn Starch - a little cornstarch (or corn flour depending on where you live) is used to soften these. It helps to give them a soft, chewy and almost fudge like texture which is just incredible!
• Salt - as always, I've added just a little salt to the cookie dough to cut through all that sweetness.
• Chocolate Chips - I've used semi sweet chocolate chips but you can use whatever chocolate chips you prefer to eat.
• Sourdough Starter - you can use active sourdough starter or sourdough discard for this recipe, it doesn't make any difference.
• Butter - you'll need salted, melted butter to bring this tray of deliciousness together!
• Sugar - both brown sugar and white sugar come together to create the caramelised, fudgey texture you're going to love in this recipe.
• Egg - just one egg is perfect here. I've used a large egg, if yours are on the small side then I recommend using two.
• Vanilla Extract - this adds such a beautiful depth of flavor to these cookies.
• Almond Extract - this is optional but oh so good and I highly recommend you try it! It adds so much flavor and gives these sourdough chocolate chip cookies bars that little extra something that you can't quite put your finger on, but you're going to love!
• Flaky Sea Salt - again, optional but highly recommended!

How To Make Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

This recipe for sourdough chocolate chip cookie bars was created using my much loved sourdough discard chocolate chip cookie recipe. It's been made thousands of times - not only in my kitchen - but by all of you as well! I played with the ingredient amounts and scaled it to fit into my favorite baking pan (yes I have a favorite baking pan, that makes me sound really fun, right?).

So let's get to it!

Preheat your oven to 160C (320F) and grease a 8" x 12" baking pan with cooking spray or butter (you can also line with parchment paper if you want to). I usually cut a piece of parchment paper to fit my pan length ways as it makes removing the baked bars easier.

Place the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, corn starch, salt and chocolate chips) into a large mixing bowl and combine. Set this aside.

Now in a separate bowl, combine sourdough starter, melted butter, brown sugar, white sugar, an egg, vanilla and almond extract. Stir together until they resemble runny caramel.

Now pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir to form the cookie bar dough. Don't over mix here.

Pour the sourdough chocolate chip cookie bar dough into the pan you prepared earlier. If you want to ferment the dough before baking, now is when you would place the dough into the fridge for up to 24 hours (just cover it with some plastic wrap or aluminum foil).

Sprinkle the dough with flaky sea salt if you are using and bake the sourdough chocolate chip cookie bars for 30 minutes at 160C (320F). Remove from the oven while they are still a little gooey in the middle and allow to cool in the pan.

Once fully cool, slice into bars and enjoy!

Flavor Variations

While these sourdough chocolate chip cookie bars are amazing just as they are, there are also some flavor variations you could make to create something extra special! Here are some other ways that we love to enjoy these bars:

• Orange Zest - add the zest of 1 to 2 fresh oranges.
• Strawberry - add a few handfuls of crushed freeze dried strawberries to the batter along with the chocolate chips.
• Peanut Butter Chips - add 100g of peanut butter chips along with the chocolate chips.
• Pretzels - add a few handfuls of crushed pretzels to the batter along with the chocolate chips.
• Pecans - add 100g of chopped pecans to the batter along with dark chocolate chips.

How To Store + Freeze

These sourdough chocolate chip cookie bars will keep for up to 7 days stored in a airtight container, if they are around that long!

They freeze really well. I usually portion them into bars and then freeze two or three cookie bars per ziploc bag. Thaw at room temperature. These work really well for school snacks.

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