Perfect Pita Bread

This recipe is from the cookbook Whole Grain Vegan Baking by Celine Steen and Tamasin Noyes.

 

Recipe: see page 78 of Whole Grain Vegan Baking.

This pita bread recipe was awesome. It is a huge difference eating homemade pita bread, rather than that stuff from the store, which I never like because it falls apart as soon as you start loading in the sandwich filling. When the pitas are fresh they are stretchier, they smell nicer, and they just taste better.

This recipe has the same ingredients as the Whole Grain Burger Buns on page 92, but with the addition of a little bit of vital wheat gluten, which is what gives this bread its stretchiness. So, if you are going to make one of these recipes, you might as well try the other.

The other reason I really liked this recipe is that it has a shorter prep time than regular loaf-type breads. It was only a few minutes of kneading, waiting for the rise (okay, that took awhile), and the baking time was less than 5 minutes. Watching the pitas bake was interesting. The oven is very hot and these look like tortillas when they go inside, but at around the 2-minute mark they start to puff up like balloons.

Ingredients: whole spelt flour, whole wheat flour, vital wheat gluten, molasses, water, active dry yeast, salt, oil.

Whole Grain Burger Buns

This recipe is from the cookbook Whole Grain Vegan Baking by Celine Steen and Tamasin Noyes.

Recipe: see page 92 of Whole Grain Vegan Baking.

This was a fairly easy recipe to make. It was the first time I've ever made yeast bread by hand and not used a bread machine to do the kneading. The recipe calls for molasses or barley malt syrup as the sugar. I couldn't find barley malt syrup, so I went with the molasses, which gave the burger buns a strong aroma and flavor. It made the kitchen smell like gingerbread cookies.

I don't know if the tomato, pickles and Morningstar Grillers Vegan burger I put on the bun were a good match with the molasses flavor. That flavor was especially strong while the buns were still warm from the oven. I saved some for the following day, and the flavor seemed more muted. I liked that much more.

Good recipe. I'll definitely make it again.

Ingredients: whole spelt flour, whole wheat flour, molasses, water, active dry yeast, salt, oil.

Wholesome Vanilla Pound Cake

This recipe is from the cookbook Whole Grain Vegan Baking by Celine Steen and Tamasin Noyes.

Recipe: see page 149 of Whole Grain Vegan Baking.

Traditional pound cake gets its name from the fact that it takes a pound each of the ingredients of butter, flour, sugar and eggs. Of course, vegans don't eat butter or eggs, so I thought this would be an interesting recipe to try. It worked out well and was very tasty. It was sweet and dense, and smelled like lemon, vanilla and coconut.

Ingredients: vanilla-flavored vegan yogurt (So Delicious used here), maple syrup, coconut oil, vanilla extract, cornstarch, whole wheat pastry flour, cooking spray, salt, baking powder, lemon zest.

Pretty and Wheaty Pretzels

This recipe is from the cookbook Whole Grain Vegan Baking by Celine Steen and Tamasin Noyes.

 

Recipe: see page 79 of Whole Grain Vegan Baking.

I messed up this recipe a bit. First, I've never made pretzels before so I was kind of excited, and I got a little carried away with the pretzel salt. I've never used that before, and it makes the pretzels look pretty. The recipe said to use just enough to cover the tops, but I may have interpreted that too liberally.  I had to brush most of it off before eating them because it made the pretzels too salty for my tastes.

The other critical part of making pretzels is to dunk them in boiling water before placing them on a sheet to bake in the oven. The water has baking soda in it, and I ended up putting 2x more baking soda in the bath than the recipe called for. That really made them salty. I was supposed to use a large saucepan that held 8 cups of water, but my largest only holds 4. I didn't think through that little math problem.

Part of the recipe calls for dissolving the yeast in the coconut milk, and that was kind of weird too. The yeast clumped up and wouldn't dissolve, so I stuck my hands in to try to break it up, and that just made my hands sticky with the wet yeast. I was sure these weren't going to rise, and surprised these came out as well as they did.

The pretzels have a short baking time at a high temperature. That makes them soft and chewy. I was looking around the internet and noticed that recipes for crunchy pretzels tend to have a longer baking time at a lower temperature. I guess that makes the pretzel dry out. This is a good recipe for soft pretzels.

Regardless of how I messed up, I think the photo gives you a good idea of what the recipe looks like.

Ingredients: white whole wheat flour, maple syrup, canned light coconut milk, active dry yeast, fine sea salt, pretzel salt, baking soda, cooking spray, water.

'Noochy' Crackers

This recipe is from the cookbook Whole Grain Vegan Baking by Celine Steen and Tamasin Noyes.

Recipe: see page 111 of Whole Grain Vegan Baking.

I was a little wary of this recipe because I've never tried making vegan crackers, but these turned out very nice. The 'noochy' in the recipe name is a reference to nutritional yeast, which is often used in vegan recipes to give a cheese-style taste. I thought these crackers had a savory flavor, but weren't particularly cheesy. So if you are one of those people who is put off by the taste of nutritional yeast, I don't think you would notice it in these crackers. More than anything, the flavor of the crackers reminded me of a pot pie crust... but with the texture of a cracker.

I've made this recipe twice and have had problems rolling out the crackers to an even consistency. There is a note about that in the instructions because that affects the baking time. The thicker the cracker, the longer it takes, and that's fine as long as they are all the same thickness. But trying to bake thick and thin at the same time is tricky. On that first batch the thin ones burned and the thick ones never got crispy. They were more like biscuits.

These held together nicely and were very quick to prepare too.

Ingredients: whole spelt flour, whole wheat pastry flour, nutritional yeast, dried cilantro, black pepper, salt, oil, water.

Whole Wheat Raisin Bran Muffins

This recipe is from the cookbook Whole Grain Vegan Baking by Celine Steen and Tamasin Noyes.

Recipe: see page 73 of Whole Grain Vegan Baking.

These are tasty muffins that also have plenty of fiber. I was pleasantly surprised they are so light and fluffy. Usually when I've tried making bran muffins they are dense and heavy, and these weren't like that at all.

They are sweetened with a little bit of applesauce and Sucanat. The applesauce helps to act as binder since there are no eggs used in vegan baking, and they also help to keep the muffins moist since there is little oil in this recipe.

I had never heard of Sucanat before this. It is short for Sugar Cane Natural. It is dried sugar cane juice, and processed differently than white or brown sugar, retaining more of its vitamins and nutrients. I had a difficult time finding it, finally ending up at Whole Foods and paying $5.50 for a 1 pound bag. The book notes you can also use muscovado sugar as a substitute.

Be sure to check out the other stops on the The Whole Grain Vegan Baking blog tour.

Ingredients: oat bran, whole wheat pastry flour, raisins, unsweetened applesauce, cinnamon, oil, vegan milk, lemon juice, Sucanat, vanilla extract, baking powder, baking soda, salt.

Whole Grain Tortillas

This recipe is from the cookbook Whole Grain Vegan Baking by Celine Steen and Tamasin Noyes.

Recipe: see page 113 of Whole Grain Vegan Baking.

I made these tacos using the Whole Grain Tortilla recipe in the book. That looks like meat, but is actually Trader Joe's Beefless Strips, which are vegan.

I picked this recipe because it seemed like it would be fairly quick. Mixing the ingredients went fast, but I was using a single cast iron pan to cook them, one at a time, so that did take me awhile... about 40 minutes to make 12 tortillas. And all of that was standing over the stove making sure they didn't burn. So, it turned out to be a lot more work than I figured.

My big concern was whether they would be able to be folded into tacos, or if they would break. I kept them covered like the instructions suggested, and that kept them moist, and it worked. I tried folding them into a burrito, but they weren't stretchy enough for that. But these were great for tacos, and I really liked the fresher taste of these homemade tortillas.

I put the leftover tortillas in the fridge and they were hard the next day. I was thinking of frying them up as tortilla chips, but decided to try steaming to get them softened. That worked out great and they folded nicely without breaking and I had tacos again.

Be sure to check out the stops on the The Whole Grain Vegan Baking blog tour. May 26 is my official day. I'll have one more post then.

Ingredients: white whole wheat flour, whole spelt flour, finely ground cornmeal, baking powder, vegan milk (Trader Joe's Unsweetened Soy Milk used here), salt, oil.

Onion Caraway Whole Wheat Loaf

This recipe is from the cookbook Whole Grain Vegan Baking by Celine Steen and Tamasin Noyes.

Recipe: see page 57 of Whole Grain Vegan Baking.

It's been awhile since I've posted, but I just received this new cookbook and wanted to break it in. I told you before I had a new oven installed a few weeks ago. I had all sorts of problems with the old one. It was one of the really cheap ones and it did not handle baking duties very well. Everything always turned out uneven. This one is really nice. It beeps when it reaches the preheat temperature. No more guessing. And did you know there is a specific rack in the oven for bread. I didn't know that. It's amazing what I learn when I read manuals.

So, the first recipe for vegan bread that jumped out at me was this one for Onion Caraway Whole Wheat Loaf. I looked interesting because, well, it had a pretty picture, and I'm a chump for pictures of pretty food (There are over 100 recipes in the book, and over 40 of them have photos.). And also, it looked really easy. There was no kneading or rising time involved on this one. Prep time was only 5 minutes or so, then it was in the oven.

This bread has a very hearty flavor, similar to rye bread. That comes from the caraway seeds and the beer. Then there are toasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas) that give it a nutty taste. This isn't the type of bread you would want to make sandwiches with because it is so crumbly, but it would complement a bowl of soup or chili.

I had a little bit of a problem with the pepitas. On the first loaf I made, they weren't sticking to the bread, so when I went to slice it, pepitas went flying. By the time I sliced the whole loaf, all the seeds had popped off. It didn't make for much of a photo, so I made the loaf again and pressed the seeds into the dough a little before putting it in the oven. That helped some of them stick a little better, but a bunch still fell off.

I am participating on the The Whole Grain Vegan Baking blog tour. May 26 is my official day, but I will be posting more on this book between now and then. Be sure to check out the other stops on the tour to see what other bloggers are doing with the recipes.

Ingredients: whole wheat pastry flour, baking powder, caraway seeds, onion powder, toasted pepitas, cornstarch (or arrowroot powder), vegan beer, oil, salt.