This week our focus is on vegan bread.
One of the things we do every single week is make our own bread. If nothing else the smell is absolutely amazing. It doesn’t take long to bake fresh home-made vegan bread which is tasty, nutritious and not filled with preservatives and additional ingredients. Shop bought Artisan bread can also often have an egg or milk glazes, so do be careful if you’re looking for vegan bread when you are out and about
We give tips on making:
- sourdough
- pizza base
- flatbreads
- regular bread
- quick bread
- monkey bread
Please see the resources and show notes section for recipes and links. You might want to listen to the podcast as well as read the recipes below in order to get all of the tips on how to make bread.
As ever, we also talk about the seasonal food we had during the week so on the menu this week was:
- Tonkotsu mushroom ramen – A fabulous recipe with a multitude of strong flavours, great if you’re cooking for non-vegans
- Celeriac
- used as a white sauce for lasagne
- Indian spiced celeriac chips
- Kale Pesto
Please scroll down for bread recipes as well as the ramen, celeriac and pesto recipes/links.
Resources and show notes
How to make sourdough
Ingredients
1 large loaf
- 500g flour
- 350ml water
- 125g starter
- 10g salt
Method
The whole process takes 8+ hours, so I usually time it for when I’m going to be putting the oven on in the evening.
Always work with a hungry starter, my starter is well established so I usually feed every 10 days or so. Make the bread the day before you would usually feed the starter, in other words, the starter is really hungry and ready to go. (There are many techniques online for how to make a starter but once it’s going, it’s really easy)
Mix all ingredients in a bowl until no dry lumps of flour remain, I use a bread machine on a dough cycle for 10 minutes, or knead by hand.
Place in a covered container for 4 hours in a warm location adding a couple of stretch and folds at about every hour or so can help distribute the carbon dioxide inside the dough more evenly.
After about four hours (the exact duration of the fermentation depends on many things, including how active your starter is and the temperature in your kitchen) the dough should be ready for shaping.
Take it out and leave it on a floured surface UNCOVERED for 30 min. This will form a skin on the dough which will prevent it sticking during the final rise. This step is really important.
Final Rise
Let the shaped bread proof in a basket, I use a basket lined with a floured muslin.
Allow another 4 hours to rise.
Baking
Turn oven on to 220°, place a lined (greaseproof paper) casserole dish with a lid in the oven for at least half an hour to get REALLY hot.
Gently tip the bread into the casserole dish, replace the lid and bake with the lid on for 25 mins.
After the initial bake, remove the lid and bake for another 20-25 minutes until golden.
Cool on a wire rack.
Vegan Pizza Base Recipe
Ingredients
- 3 teaspoons of yeast
- 450g flour
- 1 tsp sugar
- 5 Tbsp oil
- 1 tsp salt
- 230ml water
Method
Place all of the ingredients together in a bowl and when they have come together, place onto a floured surface and knead for around 10 min. Or cheat and place in a bread machine on a dough cycle.
Once the dough has risen, stretch out into a pizza shape and your dough is done.
We usually make the dough on a sheet of greaseproof paper, the pizza can then be assembled on the paper and slid from the worktop onto either a pizza stone or tin for baking, after its baked the greaseproof paper is then easy to slip from underneath for serving.
Vegan Flat Bread
Ingredients
- 1 cup of flour per person
- one tablespoon of oil
- a pinch of salt
- herbs and spices to taste, consider coriander, cumin or smoked paprika
Place the ingredients into a bowl and slowly add water whilst mixing with a spoon until the ingredients to come together into a dough. Once a basic dough has formed, using floured hands remove the dough from the bowl and place onto a floured worktop to knead. Knead for about 10 min, then divide into smaller sections. Using your hands or a rolling pin (hands are best) stretch/roll flat and fry in a dry frying pan.
More recipes mentioned in the show
- Tonkotsu mushroom ramen – recipe by Sasha Gill from “Jackfruit and Blue Ginger“
- Celeriac
- Used as a white sauce for lasagne. Steam the celeriac for 15 mins, then place in a blender with one tablespoon of nutritional yeast, 1 teaspoon of mustard and some salt. Slowly add soya milk until you have a thick sauce consistency.
- Indian spiced celeriac chips by Riverford
- Kale Pesto – steam the kale and then placed into a blender with pine nuts and olive oil and blend to a pesto. You can also add herbs and spices to taste. We then use this mixed with pasta or blobbed onto pizza.
- Quick bread – “That Dough” recipe by Lauren Toyota
Your method for sourdough is utterly bizarre. I teach baking for a living and everything about your method is wrong.
Thanks Jenny. The technique I use has been successfully implemented hundreds of times by me and friends, so to say it’s wrong is simply not true, it just may not be how you would do it. What would actually be really helpful is for you to give some constructive feedback. What would you do differently? As a professional Baker, what tips would you give to people wanting to bake sourdough? I think this might be a little more helpful than just saying we are wrong! Looking forward to your thoughtful reply…
And please remember, the purpose of this pod cast is to encourage amateurs to eat more healthily, to connect with their food and to make discoveries, let’s work together to help achieve that…