Who wouldn’t mind a soft homemade budget-friendly delicious sourdough cookie?

Thankfully, this cookie recipe is easy to make. I bring the ingredients together really fast to form the dough of these delightful cookies.

No-oven Cookie Baking

Growing up, I never once imagine I could come up with a delicious edible homemade cookie recipe at home, let alone a sourdough cookie recipe. I thought cookies could only be bought from the store or supermarket.

Those early years, most of us in my neighborhood didn’t own an oven. Needless to say, cookies were baked in an oven. Right? How in the world could we access cookies unless we bought them?

Several years ago, I began experimenting with baking cookies without an oven. My household and I enjoyed them a lot. We still do.

I’ll soon show you in the recipe how I did this.

Budget-friendly No Oven Cookies

I then began tailoring my cookie recipes and making them budget-friendly.

My goal was to maintain the goodness of each recipe as I tested it while ensuring the ingredients were available, especially in the pantry; affordable, and the recipe done in a way that it wouldn’t need sophisticated or expensive equipment to work on it.

The recipe is not only easy to make, the ingredients are readily available and accessible. They might actually be already in your pantry.

This is one of those recipes I can make without worrying about the availability of the ingredients. This makes them a very easy snack to make when you have children in your household.

Sourdough Cookies

Later, when I began working with sourdough, I also tested my cookie recipes, adding a sourdough starter as a main ingredient. This was one of those I developed and it worked fabulously.

This has become one of our favorite go-to recipes for our hospitality. These sourdough cookies are delicious! We enjoy them immensely.

Not only will they be useful as a snack for your household, you will enjoy them for breakfast, for guests, or during your teatimes.

The sourdough within the recipe makes them really soft and airy, giving the cookies a texture and feel that I trust you will love too.

The sourdough starter also works in the dough during the long bulk ferment to break down the nutrients in the dough, making it easier for your body to digest the cookies.

This is why sourdough recipes are preferable and healthier compared to their counterpart recipes without sourdough.

What ingredients will you need?

You will need:

An active sourdough starter

An active sourdough starter, like we said earlier, is key in a sourdough recipe because of what it does to break down the nutrients to a more digestible state.

It also gives the cookies the airy soft interior that is unique to these sourdough cookies.

If you are new to sourdough, find our very easy-to-follow Sourdough starter recipe here. I use readily available whole wheat flour that is also easily accessible and affordable. If you prefer the video version of the sourdough starter recipe, find it here too.

All-purpose flour

I work with any good quality all-purpose flour to make this sourdough cookie recipe.

Sugar

Sugar gives some taste to the sourdough cookies. You can reduce the sugar further or substitute it with honey. In this case, I often reduce the honey to a quarter or third cup, or as preferred.

Salt

To enjoy your sourdough cookies, don’t leave out the salt. Salt gives the cookies a delicious balanced taste that you will enjoy.

Baking soda/ Bicarbonate of Soda

Baking soda helps to make the cookies less compact and airier. It also enhances the taste of the cookies. Usually, in some sourdough recipes, it will also reduce the sour taste typical with most sourdough bread recipes. It might therefore work in the same way with cookies. This is however not the primary reason I add it to my cookie recipe.

Marge or butter (Melted)

Now that this is a budget-friendly recipe, I’m using margarine. You can use butter as well.

To melt the marge or butter, prepare a water bath by boiling water in a saucepan. The water should be about halfway or slightly less in the pan so it doesn’t get into the marge or butter while it is melting. Transfer the marge you need to a suitable little bowl that is a good conductor of heat. Place the little bowl in the hot water. The butter will begin to melt. Occasionally swirl it around in the little bowl gently until it has all melted.

Alternatively, transfer the marge/ butter to a micro-oven-friendly suitable bowl. Cover it and microwave it for 20 to 30 seconds. If some hasn’t melted, swirl it around for a minute or so. I t will all melt.

*Note that when you need to use the melted marge or butter, ensure it is warm or lukewarm. If it is hot, it will burn your sourdough starter, rendering it useless for use in the recipe.

Egg

An egg not only makes the recipe nutritious, but the result is often softer, fluffier tastier cookies which you will enjoy.

If you’d rather not add an egg though, your recipe will still be very delicious.

Vanilla Flavoring

Vanilla works to enhance the taste of the sourdough cookies. It’s flavor is loved by many. There are those few however, who do not like the taste of vanilla. If you are one of those who do not like vanilla, I want to assure you that even without vanilla, your cookies will still be tasty. I’ve made cookies without vanilla those few times I realized I have no vanilla left in my pantry. The cookies still tasted great.

To Grease the Pan (You can also line with baking paper instead)

Use marge or fat to grease your pan. I have also lined my pan with baking paper too rather than greasing. This works just fine too even when baking the sourdough cookies without an oven.

Baking the Cookies Without an Oven

No worries about how to bake your cookies. We will bake the cookies on our gas stovetop/ cooker. They will bake and cook on the inside of the cookies. I’ve done this so many times. I know it works. This is why I’m showing you how to do this.

Will you need a mixer?

For our recipe today, no blender or mixer will be needed. This should however not keep you from using one if you have and so wish to use. This is a very quick recipe to bring together as you will see. There’s no need to trouble yourself to set up your mixer and later have to clean it.

I trust you will enjoy these sourdough cookies when you bake them this way.

Let’s get right into the recipe!

No Oven Sourdough Cookies| Budget-friendly Cookie Recipe

Make these soft airy delicious budget-friendly no-oven cookies at home with all the benefits of using a sourdough starter in the recipe. You will enjoy these easy-to-make cookies. No mixer or blender needed!

Find an easy-to-follow video tutorial at the end of this post of how I make these cookies without an oven on your gas stove or cooker.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 10

Cook Time 30

Bulk Ferment 10

Total Time 10 40

Course Breakfast, Dessert, Snack

Cuisine African, American, English, kenyan

Servings 10

Equipment

2 mixing bowls
1 Wooden Spoon
1 or 2 Frying pans (Preferrably 11" in diameter or more)
1 Measuring Cup
1 teaspoon
1 Tablespoon
Baking Paper (Optional)
1 Rolling Pin
1 Cookie cutter (You can improvise with a clean cup, glass, or small spice-bottle lid that is suitable for cutting the cookie dough)

Ingredients

½ cup active sourdough starter
2 tbsps warm or lukewarm melted marge/ butter (I had heaped the tbsps with marge before melting)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla flavoring
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ cup sugar (Or as preferred)
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda/ baking soda
⅓ tsp salt
1 tsp marge/ fat to grease pan and a little flour to dust it (Alternatively, you can use baking paper)

Instructions

Begin by adding the flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda to a suitable mixing bowl.
Evenly mix them with a wooden spoon then set aside.
Add the sourdough starter, melted marge/ butter, egg, and vanilla to a separate mixing bowl.
Mix with a wooden spoon until evenly mixed.
Add the dry ingredients to this wet mixture.
Begin mixing with the wooden spoon until the dough is too heavy to mix with the wooden spoon.
Switch to using your hands and mix until you've formed a stiff dough. If it is too stiff though, feel free to add a few drops of milk or water, otherwise, the ingredients should be sufficient to form a stiff but fairly malleable piece of dough.
Continue mixing the dough with your hand a few more minutes, making sure the ingredients are evenly mixed throughout the dough. Gather the dough into a nice even ball and place it in the bowl.
Proceed to cover the dough with a clean kitchen towel.
Allow it to bulk ferment for 8 to 12 hours.
Don't expect it to rise or expand much. This is a rather heavy dough as you can already tell. But that isn't going to keep our sourdough starter from working in the dough.
Better still, after the long ferment, I like to transfer my sourdough doughts to the fridge (not freezer) so the active sourdough starter can continue to break down the nutrients in the dough to make it easier for the body to digest. This will happen at a slower rate which is good.
The dough should be okay in the fridge for at least 3 days. I personally dont like to keep it beyond 3 days.
If you however don't have the luxury of more time, go straight to the next step of preparation and baking after the first bulk ferment of 8 to 12 hours.
Grease and dust a suitable pan. A wider pan is preferrable as it can bake more cookies. You won't have to bake the cookies many times.
I also prefer to use two pans to hasten the process.
If you'd rather use baking paper, simply line your pan with the baking paper. cutting and trimming with a scissor until the baking paper fits the pan as shown.
I used both methods - greasing one pan and lining the other with baking paper to show you both methods work okay.
(When baking the last batch of cookies which might fit into only one pan, use either of the pans without changing the baking paper for the one with baking paper, or greasing again the one you'd greased before. Both will work just as well for the second round.)
Next, knead the cookie dough for a minute or so then lightly flour your surface and roll out the sourdough cookie dough to a thickness of about a centimeter or slightly less.
Using your cookie cutter (or improvised cutter) cut into desired shapes.
Transfer to a lighted gas stovetop on full flame for 20 to 30 seconds just to heat up the pan.
If it is the wide burner, don't reduce it as it's been designed to get to its lowest. That flame is still too high. It will burn your cookies before they are ready. Rather, reduce the flame as though you are switching it off and reduce to the lowest flame- the kind that if you blew hard on it, it would actually go off.
If the burner is the smallest on your gas stove, reduce the flame the way it has been designed to get to its lowest by your stove manufacturer.
Because the burner is tiny, this flame is usually too low to burn your cookies. It will bake them just fine on this tiny burner.
I happen to have these two tiny burners on my stove. (One is slightly bigger than the other but still low.) I prefer baking with these because getting to that low flame is so much easier than when I'm working with the wider burners. The cookies will also tend to bake faster on these tiny burners without burning.
Your cookies should bake for 15 to 20 minutes then they'll be ready.
Usually, when baking on the gas stove, they'll not brown on the surface. Turn them over and bake another 10 minutes so they can brown on the opposite side.
Your cookies are now ready. Transfer to a cooling rack or appropriate tray or platter to cool.
Once cooled, enjoy with a suitable beverage.
Enhance your hospitality for the glory of God.

Video

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