These soft, homemade sourdough oatmeal raisin cookies are made with tangy sourdough starter, rolled oats, brown sugar, cinnamon and raisins. The secret is to chill the dough for 1 hour (or more) for crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside, bakery-style cookies.
What’s the draw to oatmeal raisin cookies? The oats? Are we convinced it’s a healthy cookie because it’s an oatmeal cookie?
Surely it’s not the raisins. No one gets excited about raisins except for me ( I love chewy dried fruit!). There’s just something nostalgic about them. My sourdough version hits all the right notes: crisp on the outside, soft in the middle, with an addictive buttery taste.
Why This Recipe Works:
- Easy to find pantry ingredients
- Same-day bake, or chilled overnight option foe deeper flavor
- Dough (balls) can be frozen up to 3 months
- A tablespoon-sized cookie scoop is used for quick and uniform portioning.
About Your Sourdough Starter.
For this recipe, you’ll need a 100% hydration starter, which just means it’s fed equal parts flour and water by weight. Active or sourdough discard is fine.
Keep in mind, hydration is irrelevant if you’re not looking at the type of flour it’s fed with too – all flours absorb differently (my sourdough starter is fed with bread flour). That’s why it’s important to pay attention to texture. It should look like thick, pourable yogurt.
Testing Notes: Understanding Chill Time
I tested this recipe 5+ times and I learned something interesting: a minimum chill time of 1 hr. is required to prevent the cookies from spreading too much when baked.
See the picture above? The cookie in the left was chilled for only 30 minutes. The one on the right? 12 hours. This finding is good to know, should your cookies look different than mine.
How to Make Sourdough Oatmeal Raisin Cookies {Step-By-Step Recipe}
To Start: Whisk the dry ingredients together, minus the oats. In a separate small bowl combine the wet ingredients. Then mix everything together.
Next, you’ll fold in the oats, raisins, and walnuts (optional, but good!). The dough will a bit sticky, which is normal. Chill for 1 hr. or overnight.
Before baking, here’s a great tip: roll a portion of dough in between your palms – if the texture is tacky (not sticky) you’re good to go. If not, add a tablespoon of flour, mix well, and chill for another 20 minutes.
Note: the consistency of the dough will depend on the viscosity of your starter. It will be slightly different for everyone.
To finish, bake tablespoon size scoops of dough for 10-11 minutes @ 350 F, or until golden brown. Your kitchen will smell incredible!
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Soft & Chewy Sourdough Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 10-11 minutes
- Total Time: 0 hours
- Yield: 20–24 cookies 1x
- Category: Sourdough Discard Recipes
- Method: Oven-Baked
- Cuisine: American
- Diet: Vegetarian
Description
These soft, homemade sourdough oatmeal raisin cookies are made with tangy sourdough starter, rolled oats, brown sugar, cinnamon and raisins. The secret is to chill the dough for 1 hour (or more) for crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside, bakery-style cookies.
This recipe was inspired by Love & Lemons perfect oatmeal cookie recipe, which is delightful. To their base recipe, I added sourdough starter, more cinnamon, and increased the quantities of flour and sugar to compensate for the tang and texture naturally found in sourdough.
Notes & tips:
- Be sure to chill the dough for a minimum of 1 hour. The batter needs time to set up, or more specifically: the flour needs time to absorb the liquid to create sturdy (not flat) cookies.
- The longer you chill the dough, the puffier the baked cookies will be. The maximum chill test that I did was 12 hours; the cookies retained their rustic shape nicely without looking like domed muffin tops. This tip is just an FYI, should you find yourself doing a lengthier chill time in the fridge and wondering why your cookies don’t look like mine.
- Please weigh your ingredients. It makes all the difference in the world: cakey vs. flat and crispy cookie. You can purchase an inexpensive, reliable kitchen scale here.
- Substitutions: If you don’t like raisins, use dried cranberries. You can also do 50/50 dried fruit and chocolate chips.
Ingredients
Dry Ingredients:
- 180 g all purpose flour
- 120 g old fashioned rolled oats (not instant)
- 1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp. baking soda
- 1/2 tsp. baking powder
- 1/4 tsp. fine sea salt
Wet Ingredients:
- 113 g butter, melted and cooled
- 170 g packed brown sugar
- 50 g granulated sugar
- 50 g sourdough starter (active or discard)
- 1 large egg
- 1 egg yolk
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract
Mix Ins:
- 1/2 cup raisins
- 1/2 cup chopped toasted walnuts
Instructions
- Melt the butter: 1 minute in the microwave or in a pan, on the stove top. Transfer to a bowl; cool completely before using.
- Add the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder and fine sea salt to a large bowl; whisk to combine.
- In a separate small bowl: whisk the cooled melted butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, sourdough starter, egg, egg yolk and vanilla extract.
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients; mix well to combine.
- Fold in the oats, raisins and walnuts (if using). Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. The dough will be sticky.
- Cover the bowl and chill the dough for a minimum of 1 hour (or overnight). Please refer to Notes & Tips in the top section of this recipe for additional understanding.
- Before you are ready to bake, check the texture of the cookie batter. Roll a small portion of dough in-between your palms; it should hold together with a tacky (not sticky) texture. If the dough feels too wet and sticks to your hands, add a tablespoon of flour, mix well, and chill for another 20 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Scoop the dough in heaping tablespoon-sized portions onto your lined sheet pan. Use a cookie scoop or a regular tablespoon.
- Bake for 10-11 minutes or light golden brown.
- Remove from the oven. Cool the cookies on the tray for approximately 5 minutes, and then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.
Comments
Lea Heppner says
Had to 1/4 cup more flour. Definitely leave in fridge longer than one hour. They turned out beautifully and are very delicious.
Jacky says
Cut the sugar in half and only used one egg. Still turned out great and sweet enough IMO.
Emilie Raffa says
Thanks for sharing, Jacky! 🥰
Cathleen says
I have baked the cookies for the 3rd time. Me and my family have become big fans of them. So far I have tried different flavors – with cochcolate, raisins, peanuts. Soft and chewy. Delicious. Thank you! Many greetings!
Marge says
We both loved these cookies. A great way to use sourdough discard. My husband thinks they’re the best cookie ever. I substituted dried apricots for raisins, but other than that, I stuck to the recipe. I did chill them overnight. They will be a favorite going forward. P.S. They’re also a pretty healthy cookie and come out to around 94-100 calories per cookie, depending on the size. A Must Try !
Jane Shaylor says
These are gorgeous! I added cranberries and vegan egg replacer.
Janice Graves says
Delicious cookies! I made this recipe again today. But I have a question…if the brown sugar is measured in grams what would it need to be “packed”?
Carol Gray says
I baked after a 14 hour chill. Just because I mixed them last night and baked this morning. Used dried cranberries instead of raisins. So delicious! Trying the chocolate chip ones next!
Emilie Raffa says
Yum! Sounds delicious Carol! 🥰
Colleen Erickson says
This is our favorite sourdough oatmeal cookie recipe! Perfect as is.
Cari Petrella says
If you like a soft, chewy cookie, these are amazing. My new favorite oatmeal cookie recipe!
Stacey says
Hello! I like the idea of using sourdough starter for oatmeal cookies and refrigerating the cookie dough for the fermentation benefits. However, I’m the odd one I guess, in that I prefer cookies that are more spread out/flat. Any idea how to achieve that? Should I let the cookie dough come to room temperature before baking?
Allison says
I’m sorry to be the odd one out, but we didn’t love these cookies. They were tasty and will be great with coffee or milk in the morning, but as the oatmeal raisin cookie one may have in their mind, these fell short for us in a few ways: not enough raisins, a bit more “bready” than cookie, slightly under sweet, and the baking time was too long for my oven on first batch (personal problem tho, not recipe creator’s!) I followed recipe as written and used one day old discard, chilled for about 3 hours prior to baking and baked in 3 batches consecutively. The first were too dark on bottom at 11 minutes in my old oven, the rest were best at 10 minutes at around 330° We just found them to not quite satisfy that oatmeal raisin cookie craving so we will try another recipe next time. I just wanted to use up some discard in a cookie recipe before it sat in my fridge too long and got more sour.
K Resnick says
The dough is in the fridge now. It might be helpful to include the oatmeal in the add-ins (per the directions) instead of the ingredients list, as I mixed all the dry ingredients together and included the oatmeal.
Lisa says
Did the same thing! Glad I am not the only one. They still turned out great though! I used cranberries and dark chocolate chips because that’s all I had on hand. Will be trying cranberries and white chocolate next time.
Jan says
My husband and I both said the cookies taste the best a day old. The flavors seemed to have blended and become sweeter.
Danielle Elswick says
These were fantastic! I soaked the raisins in boiling water for about 10 minutes and dried them before I added them to plump them up!
Linda says
These cookies were delicious! The whole family loved them (including my 9 and 10 yo). Thank you! ❤️