One of our community members, Renea Reay-Buchholz, shared this recipe of hers, which I reprint with permission:
Ingredients
½ cup sourdough starter
½ cup molasses
2 cups flour – I used whole wheat einkorn
½ tsp salt
¼ cup water
Mix up, and put in fridge for 6 hours.
½ cup butter
½ cup coconut sugar, or sorghum, or honey – if honey or sorghum you should eliminate water and increase flour by ¼ cup
½ tsp cinnamon
¾ tsp ginger
¼ tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp cloves
½ tsp baking soda or 3/4 if using honey
Instructions
Mix sourdough starter, molasses, flour, salt, water and put in the fridge for 6 hours.
Remove from fridge, let soften for maybe 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, cream butter with coconut sugar. Add cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and baking soda. Mix well. add to above softened dough and return to fridge for at least an hour or so to firm back up. I put it in fridge overnight.
Roll out somewhat thin and bake at 375 degrees for 12 minutes.
Notes
The next batch I make I would like to mix entire recipe and put in fridge, wait 6 hours and bake as soon as I take it out. Not sure if baking soda has an effect on the sourdough starter.
As I rolled out the dough was a bit soft, so I added plenty of flour to my work surface and kept it well floured throughout the process.
All experimental!
Nourishing Our Children 
10 Responses to Sourdough Gingerbread Cookies
Why the baking soda if you are using sourdough starter? Wouldn’t the starter provide enough leavening? Especially if instead of putting the initial mix in the fridge for 6 hours, put it in a warm place for 12 hours or so, well covered, of course, so the yeast gets to work.
The baking soda may not be necessary, we compared many “ordinary” cookie recipes to a sourdough choc chip recipe, and an ordinary gingerbread recipe. Although baking soda does give things a more “cake-like” texture. It should not be necessary for leavening! This was purely experimental, and we encourage you to try without baking soda and let us know about the results.
Refrigeration is imperative, because they are roll-out cookies. You certainly could leave out for several hours before refrigerating, however you might end up with a stronger sourdough flavor to your cookies.
The chemical reaction of the starter and the baking soda help give it rise. It’s common to see baking soda in recipes with sour dough start (which i like better than still calling for baking yeast). I have several recipes that call for both starter and soda, such as banana bread, and brownies.
Great idea, but I’m missing the first part of the directions.
If you look on the list of ingredients, she tells you to mix up the ingredients and put them in the fridge.
Thank you for explaining. First time I’ve seen this way of writing a recipe.
This was provided to us by one of our community members in our Nourished Children group, so it may not follow formal recipe protocol.
is this crunchy enough to use for gingerbread house?!
These were good. I made them gluten free with my brown rice starter and gluten free flour and they were very nice. Kid approved as well.
Should I use active starter or discard?