Leveraging toastiness can be a powerful tool for creating rich, complex flavors. Toastiness is often defined in dictionaries as “comfortably or cozily warm”. I think it’s pretty cool how this definition describes the actual food flavor so spot-on. When you combine toastiness with coconut, you’d better watch out; you’re in for a burst of rich toastiness with a lingering creamy coconut finish that can fade into maltiness. Perfect for kicking your vegan baking up a notch or three!

Why confine toasted coconut to coconut flour? By making coconut milk out of toasted coconut flour, we’re able to apply this rich, complex creamy toastiness to a much wider array of vegan baking applications. Ice creams, cakes, puddings, cream sauces, pancakes; any food that uses a large proportion of liquid can take advantage of toasted coconut milk in place of regular non-dairy milk. You can even put it in your breakfast oatmeal where it’ll add a rich, savory maltiness. But how does this flavor come to be?

Several years ago, one of my favorite restaurants, Millennium, in San Francisco had a particular bread spread they would serve with fresh bread, just as you were seated. This particular spread wasn't buttery, but it had a particular creamy buttery oomph that actually made it taste better than butter when it was slathered on your crusty slice. And since it obviously wasn't butter, you could spread on even more without getting funny looks from your Mom across the table. You could run out of it and confidently ask for more, again and again! Then one day they switched over to a fava bean-based spread that was sadly sub par and the bread spread I loved oh so much mysteriously disappeared from existence. This savory bread spread made a lasting impression on me and I knew that one day I would rise to the challenge and create my own rich version.

Kimchi adds a layer of spicy tang to vegan butter due to its fermented goodness. You can use mild or spicy kimchi depending on how much spice you'd like to have come through. I recommend medium to spicy kimchi for a complex Vegan Butter that's great on toast or other savory items. You could even make a mushroom Vegan Turnover using this as your butter block!

Vegan Butter is designed to mimic real butter in vegan baking applications. Like real butter, Vegan Butter is more solid than tub margarine and not as spreadable. This is so it can perform optimally in vegan baking applications. If your goal is to have a conveniently softer, spreadable Vegan Butter, swap out 1 Tablespoon of the coconut oil with 1 additional Tablespoon canola, light olive oil or rice bran oil.

Banana Vegan Butter doesn't utilize curdling so it's great for people looking to avoid soy. It can also be made raw. It has a smooth, subtle buttery banana flavor that's great for using as a butter substitute or for amping up desserts that already showcase banana. Try Banana Vegan Butter on pancakes or make banana croissants. Non-dairy butter is designed to mimic real butter in vegan baking applications. Like real butter, Vegan Butter is more solid than tub margarine and not as spreadable. This is so it can perform optimally in vegan baking applications. If your goal is to have a conveniently softer, spreadable Vegan Butter, swap out 1 Tablespoon of the coconut oil with 1 additional Tablespoon canola, light olive oil or rice bran oil.

This Vegan Garlic Tarragon Bread Spread recipe features extra virgin olive oil, onion, garlic, fresh tarragon and just a touch of white wine vinegar to evoke a complex buttery flavor with a sharp cheese inspired finish.

Holiday dinners at my Godparent's house was always a special occasion. The food was inspirational but the the one dish that my brother and I looked forward to all year was the simple but perfect implementation of garlic bread. This consisted of a store-bought flute of San Francisco sourdough, sliced but leaving the bottom crust intact so the slices could be torn off as the loaf worked its way around the table. This loaf was buttered between the slices, wrapped in tin foil and warmed in the oven. Buttering the slices while leaving the loaf intact had the advantage of ensuring both sides of each slice was buttered. Wrapping the loaf in tin foil had the benefit of allowing the entire loaf to be saturated with buttery aromas and flavors during its time in the oven and the tin foil could be folded back over the loaf in between servings to keep the bread warm while it was on the table. Brilliant!

Traditional flour is ground endosperm powder which is the result of the flour mill removing most of the hard pieces and hence, nutrition from the wheat berry. I'm a huge fan of whole sprouted grains because they're more flavorful and contain significantly more nutrients than bread made with traditional flour. This Flourless Sprouted Whole Wheat Bread recipe utilizes sprouted wheat berries that are then ground into a purée. This requires a substantially hardy food processor. If you're not sure if your food processor is powerful enough, look on the bottom. It should say at least 6.5 Amps or "6.5 A". 

This bread was difficult to design due to the nature of the wheat berry. This hardy seed contains the germ which is the heart and soul of the seed. The germ is the embryo of the plant in its dormant state. It's accompanied by the starchy endosperm which acts as fuel for the germ when it sprouts or germinates. This package is encased in a firm fibrous shell called the bran. This protects the seed kind of like an egg shell protects an egg. 

A recipe from my book Triumph of the Lentil, this is my staple bread recipe. Even with a newborn and a toddler to look after I manage to bake this twice a week, so that we never have to buy bread. Because of the slow rising time it requires very minimal kneading (only enough to mix in the flour), doesn’t require any oil or sugar to taste good and stays fresh for longer. The slow rise develops the gluten in the same way that kneading would, but results in a superior taste.

Each rise can take between eight and twenty hours and put in the fridge at any stage, to be baked within two weeks. I like to make each rise around twelve hours. It can also be sped up a little, to make the total time as little as 16 hours by doubling the amount of yeast and combining the first and second rise together.

This Vegan Nine Grain Whole Wheat Bread recipe is unique in that it sports nine grains and contains 100% whole wheat flour for the rest of the ingredients which adds a superb flavor and texture not found in many other breads. Baking a bread with both of these features involves a little more effort but I think you'll agree that it's time well spent. This bread differs from a regular bread recipe in two ways: First, the grains are soaked so they soften and integrate into the loaf. Second, since we're using 100% whole wheat flour for the rest of the flour we need to soak it overnight so the bran softens. This softened bran will enable a more efficient rise because the bran won't cut gluten strands. It will also allow for a more supple crumb. These soaked flour and grains are technically referred to as, what else? A soaker. I suspect the bread baker who coined this term was having a creativity block the day he named this method.

The secret to making great focaccia involves using an herbed olive oil to lend an array of herb flavors, allowing the dough to ferment in a refrigerated state for at least 12 hours which allows complex bread flavors to develop and baking a wet dough at a very high temperature which ensures a soft, spongy texture and a crispy crust. Fresh herbs are paramount to infusing the right intensity of flavors in this focaccia recipe. Feel free to use any combination of fresh basil, thyme, rosemary, oregano, sage, savory or marjoram. A long, refrigerated fermentation allows naturally occurring enzymes within the flour to break out more sugars from the starches for the yeast to ferment. These extra sugars allow the yeast to built more flavor, sweeten the focaccia and caramelize under heat which contributes a multitude of enhanced flavors.

This Vegan Sourdough Pizza Crust recipe has a little more oomph in the form of the flavors produced by wild yeast fermentation, also known as sourdough. The wild yeast isn't enough to leaven the dough completely on it's own so it's spiked with some bread yeast to help it along. This vegan crust is great for cheeseless pizzas or other pizzas where you're not using intensely flavored toppings and you'd like the crust to contribute more flavor to the pie. It's also a great way to use the sourdough starter you've been keeping in your fridge. You do have a resident starter in your fridge right?

This Sprouted Wild Yeasted Whole Wheat Bread recipe is a nod to how the first breads probably got their start. Wheat berries were probably softened with water, ground and left out in the elements where they were then populated by airborne yeasts and bacteria, causing the dough to rise slightly. Placing this dough on hot rocks in or near a fire probably resulted in a fine vegan treat like nothing else available at the time.

This Wild Yeasted Wheat Bread recipe, also known as sourdough bread uses a wild yeast sponge to leaven the dough, creating a multitude of complex flavor compounds in the process. Be sure to read and cultivate your wild yeast starter and sponge before starting this vegan bread. Sandwich breads baked in loaf pans are usually baked at lower temperatures around 350F (177C) to 375F (191C) and 'enriched' with things like sweeteners, oil and extra salt. Artisan breads formed and baked without loaf pans are baked at higher temperatures around 400F (204C) to 475F (246C) where the heat allows extra flavors to be developed. Taking this into account, your bread recipe and baking process will be slightly different depending on which method you choose. This recipe gives you options for both styles.

This Vegan Cornmeal Spelt Pizza Crust recipe is one of the fastest, easiest crusts around because it doesn't need lots of kneading and it doesn't require yeast. Although it's not gluten-free, it does have very low amounts of gluten which is good if you're trying to cut back on it due to food allergies. This recipe makes a vegan crust that is 12 to 14 inches. This dough can also be refrigerated for later use.