VEGAN BREADS - Index

[I'm still working on this post, putting in the links to all the breads is time-consuming. If there is no link attached to the bread you're interested in, simply put it in the search box, and you should be directed to the recipe.]

Index of vegan breads:

Apfel kuchen (German apple cake)

Bagels

Bara brith

Belgian buns

Bialys

Bread bowls (from these to trenchers)

Calzone (soda bread calzone) baked in a chiminea

Canapés

Carta da musica

Chelsea buns (undercover)

Chocolate and banana bread 

Chocolate and beetroot bread

Chocolate and cherry bread

Chocolate loaf

Chocolate twist

Christmas loaf

Ciabatta

Cloche method

Cornbread

Crackers – poppy and sesame seeds

Creole soda bread

Croissants

Danish pastries

Devonshire splits

Doughnuts

Dumplings

Farthing buns

Focaccia

Fougasse

Fougassette

Fruit braid

Fruit loaf

Garlic batons

Grissini

Hot cross buns

Hot cross buns

Hungarian chocolate bread

Iced buns

Jam tart

Lardy cake

Loaves

Marzipan and apple tartlets

Mushroom en croute

Naans

Pane casereccio

Pane cioccolato (Italian chocolate bread)

Pane frattau

Pannetonne

Parathas

Pasties

Peshwari naan

Petit pain au chocolat

Pierogis

Pies (Thai, ratatouille, apple)

Pikelets

Pirozkhis

Pittas

Pizza (2 red pizzas)

Pretzels

Quick breads

Reindeer droppings

Rolls

Schiacciatta con l’uva

Soda bread

Sourdough

Spelt loaf

Spicy fruit buns

Spicy fruit naan

Swedish tea ring

Tempura

Trenchers

Yum yums

ALL bread should be vegan - that is, made with flour, salt (which can be omitted), yeast and water. That's it!

That's Real Bread as defined by the Real Bread Campaign (RBC).

"Real Bread is that made without the use of processing aids or any other artificial additives."

"Additional ingredients are great as long as they are natural...and themselves contain no artificial additives."

I teach breadmaking - in a variety of settings and to all manner of groups - that's my job. Necessarily, this involves me in making bread that is not vegan. It's always vegetarian, however. Of course, all the breads that I make for my own consumption are vegan. 

Unfortunately, my wife is a confirmed omnivore - when I announced I was going to be a vegetarian, her response was, "Don't be so bloody silly!" :) "And what about our Sunday roast chicken? And Christmas - what about our turkey?" (This was in November, 2001.) 

I'm a man of peace and compromise, so for five weeks I was vegetarian during the week and had roast chicken on the Sunday. I had the turkey at Christmas and I have been a vegetarian ever since - becoming a vegan around 2004.

So, not all of this blog is vegan or vegetarian - but the point of this post is to steer my fellow vegans away from any recipes that aren't vegan.

In this post I want to emphasise and feature - and link to - all the breads I make that are vegan - the great majority.

I want to look at the different 'natural' ingredients that recipes often call for, that aren't vegan, and, either discount them altogether, or suggest alternatives:

Eggs. Eggs are completely unnecessary in bread - and there is no necessity  for any egg replacement. None! Ever!

As an aside, eggs (or egg replacements) are also unnecessary in:
Pancakes
Cakes
Pasta 
Pastry

Butter. Where ever you see this in a recipe, replace with a similar amount of olive oil. (I use Lidl's - or Aldi's - Extra Virgin Olive Oil which is cheap, and comes high in the Which? Magazine tests.) But as a general rule, you can use as much or as little as you choose.  Olive oil adds flavour and helps keep the bread fresh for longer. Other vegetable oils don't seem to add much to bread - with the exception of the sunflower oil in which dried tomatoes have been soaked. When this oil is added to a pizza dough, it makes a wonderful crust - crisp, a little like short-crust pastry!

Cheese. This is used mainly as a pizza topping, in breadmaking - and, as you'll see, there are so many toppings that can be used in its place. Not as a cheese replacement, but as flavoursome toppings in their own right. Otherwise, in cheese rolls for instance, vegan cheese or other tasty alternatives can be used.

Meats of all sorts. Not even in mincemeat! :) (Although in the US some still quaintly believe that this Christmas-associated ingredient should contain meat! Ugh!) Not necessary in any shape or form.

A LATE NIGHT SUPPER - ITALIAN SODA BREAD AND CHILLI

OK, a star instead of a cross - just for fun!

Out for a game of bridge this evening – we’re all beginners, but it’s great fun – which meant I couldn’t have my usual pre-dinner pint and a glass of wine with the meal, since I would be driving.

During the evening I enthused about my latest favourite bread – Italian soda bread, which I had made over the weekend whilst staying with my daughter. I made it on the Sunday evening, and, since I was fasting after dinner, I was unable to taste it until Tuesday lunchtime. Made with simple ingredients – Sainsbury’s basic self-raising flour and Lidl’s EVOO, it was full of flavour.

On my return home tonight I thought I deserved a drink, so I poured half a pint of beer and the soda bread was still on my mind. I knew I could knock one up very quickly, so that’s what I did. I thought that if the white flour version was tasty, a soda bread made with wholemeal flour should be even tastier. Accordingly, I took out a bag of ‘Park Mill, Bateman’s Strong, Stoneground wholemeal flour’ I'd acquired, and made it with that + plus 2 teaspoons of baking powder.

It was in the oven within 5 minutes and took 20 minutes to bake. The result was a loaf weighing about 350g and would have cost around 28p if I’d have used own-brand wholemeal bread flour at £1.50/1.5kg or 34p if I’d used my usual bread flour, Doves Organic wholemeal. Whatever, this bread is cheap!

So what about the flavour? Well, I was expecting it to be much more flavoursome than the loaf made with white self-raising flour, and maybe it was. But, since I’d rather eat wholemeal for health reasons, this was well worth doing.

Here’s the recipe:

200g wholemeal flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

125g (or ml, they’re both the same) cold water

25g extra virgin olive oil.

Mix together into a soft squishy dough, knead (flatten and fold) several times, then flatten out into a circle about 2.5cm thick. Place on a baking sheet lined with baking parchment and cut a cross into the dough almost all the way through. Soda bread is a bit denser than yeast-risen dough and this allows the heat to get to the middle of the loaf easier.

Bake at 220C for 15-20 minutes. Look for a good colour underneath. It’s done when a skewer passed through the thickest part of the loaf comes out clean – or, when it breaks apart cleanly. Wrap in a tea-towel until it cools, to give you a softer crust.

Oh, what about the chilli, I hear you ask! Well, I had a sixth of the loaf with a couple of dessertspoons of chilli non carne leftover from dinner - along with half a pint of stout and about an inch of wine. And very nice it was too. 

I no longer feel guilty about eating at night - since I no longer have breakfast, this evens itself out! :)

Update, 4 days later:
I ate the last of this loaf this lunchtime - at four days old it was still OK. Probably best to eat it by the third day, but if it goes over into a fourth day, it still won't be stale!