VEGAN BAKING TIPS
If you are someone who has recently shifted to veganism, and you are looking for the right alternatives to your ingredients along with amazing vegan baking tips, then you are in the right place. When you first enter the world of baking, all the big names and substitutes can seem scary and intimidating but in reality, cooking food based on a vegan diet is one of the easiest tasks and it will be quite fun to embark on this journey of knowledge and health all together. Transitioning to someone who is all about plant-based diet is not an easy job and there will be times you will feel yourself getting all too overwhelmed. The thought of buying the right products and not messing up which getting those is scary and very real. But, no more. The following few tips are for the newly transitioned people who are trying out the plant-based diet and also for those who might take up veganism in future.
- THE PREPARATION
Before you get into the process of baking, you need to have your ingredients in order. Make sure to study the recipe a day before so that you have enough time to get the right substitutes for the recipe and don’t end up including an ingredient that isn’t vegan. Also, keeping your oven pre-heated and having your pans and other utensils lined with butter and other substitutes before you begin baking is extremely important. An unfinished and improper preparation will just bring your will to bake down.
- EGGS
One of the most important things in baking is the eggs which add moisture, keeps the texture alike, and also uplifts your food item. Replacing them with the right vegan and plant-based substitute is extremely important. Although there are a lot of alternatives for eggs which can range from flax seed to banana mashes or chia seeds and gram flour, all these things will be readily available and the right YouTube videos or blog posts will help you bake your snack exactly the way you would have done with real eggs. Egg replacements will provide you with an end dish as savory as the one with egg so you don’t need to worry about anything here.
- FATS
One of the most important ingredients when it comes to baking is fats. You need to find the most suitable replacement for the fat products you would have originally used in your baking process. One of the most famous alternatives for butter is margarine which is a great substitute but the only problem it has faced till now is the addition of extra oils which could be harmful. Neutral oils like canola, grapeseed, avocado is one of the finest replacements for butter and apart from being healthy, they are the most vegan you could go. The refined version of coconut oil is also a great alternative because of the ease with which you can bake pastries and cookies with it and the refining ensures that the smell and taste also go away.
- SWEETENER
Finding the right sweetener which will be vegan-friendly option is something a lot of people struggle with. This is mainly because of the unease in finding the right texture for the sweetener you are using. Maple syrup or date syrup could be a great alternative instead of honey but then again you need to make sure that whatever you are baking is per the type of sweetener you opted for. Most of the time in baking, the amount of sugar that is required is a lot more than what is needed to make your food sweet. So, adding something of a different type could alter that and you need to follow the recipes by the book. Apart from syrups, coconut sugar is also a great substitute.
- YEAST
A lot of people get confused and often tend to mistake yeast be something that is not vegan. Well, let’s clear it all out for once. Yeast is fungi which is vegan and is a very important ingredient in baking anything. If your recipe demands yeast, you don’t need to substitute it with anything else because it is perfectly fine for you to make anything vegan with the use of yeast. There are three types of yeast: the first is the nutritional yeast which is used if you want to make something and have a cheesy supplement to it. The next type of yeast is baker’s yeast which is a leavening agent and the last type of yeast is the brewer’s yeast which is rich in amino acids and other nutrients.
If you keep these alternatives and tips in mind, whatever you are trying to bake will be a success and you won’t even feel like you have used substitutes. These vegan baking tips are some of the best and you should implement them the next time you get your chef’s hat on.