The texture of baked goods is super important. For the most part, vegan baking is no different than non-vegan baking when it comes to how we make our cakes and breads rise.
But it’s still super important to understand how and why things happen.
First of all, what does “leavening” mean? In short, the word refers to the gasses in a baked good that make it rise when baked. But cakes, breads, and other baked goods can’t just rise on their own.
They need a leavening agent added to the batter or dough, which causes it to rise in the oven. Without this addition, your baked goods would have a dense, flat texture. Gross!
There’s actually three different categories of leavening agents: chemical, biological, and physical. We’ll cover all of them!
Chemical Leavening Agents
You’re probably familiar with baking soda and baking powder, which are both commonly-used chemical leaveners.
Back in ye olden days, before these were available, cakes and breads took a long-ass time to make, because they contained yeast and had to be risen first.
But baking soda and baking powder revolutionized the baking world in the 1800s. Suddenly, you could bake something in under an hour! Your baked goods didn’t have to have a yeasty aftertaste! You could have extra time for other fun stuff, like enjoying the industrial revolution!
But how are these two products different?
Baking soda became widely available in America starting in the mid-1800s. It’s an incredibly useful product to have around the house, especially if you’re into natural cleaning methods. But it’s also a great leavening agent in baked goods.
Baking powder became commercially available around the same time as baking soda. It’s basically baking soda with a weak acid, (plus a stabilizer like cornstarch or cream of tartar to prevent any reactions from happening before you put it into your baked goods).
So what makes baking soda and baking powder work?
Think back to your grade school science classes:
Baking soda works in your baked goods just like it does in your science fair volcano. It’s a base that needs an acid to make it rise – and make your baked goods nice and fluffy. That’s why recipes that use baking soda will normally also have an acidic ingredient (such as vinegar or lemon juice).
Once it’s in the oven, those carbon dioxide bubbles will make your cakes and cookies rise beautifully.
Baking powder, on the other hand, is a complete leavening agent. It’s got both a base (baking soda) and an acid in it. You can just add it into your baked goods, and the baking powder will react to the moisture in the batter or dough. It will continue to rise in the oven, similar to baking soda.
Biological Leavening Agents
Dry yeast is the main biological leavening agent that you’ll use in baking. There are two main types you can buy. They look similar, but you use them differently:
Active dry yeast needs to be dissolved and activated in water before you mix it with the rest of your ingredients. It’s what most recipes use, and more common to find in supermarkets.
Instant dry yeast can be added straight to your dry ingredients. This means you can cut the rising time in half (although a longer rising time does give bread more flavor. So it’s a trade-off.)
But why does this weird brown powder make your baked goods rise?
Well, yeast is a type of fungus. It’s a living organism that eats sugar for energy – this is why quite a few yeasted bread recipes include a tablespoon of sugar. This process ferments the sugar, and carbon dioxide is produced as a byproduct.
This is a relatively slow process, which is why you need to let bread rise on your counter for a few hours before baking it. A warm environment can help speed it along, but you can’t rush the rising time.
So why do you have to knead yeasted breads?
Yeast is most frequently used in recipes that have a strong gluten content. This allows for the air pockets created by the carbon dioxide to hold in place and create a nice open texture. You need to knead breads to build up the gluten structures.
For other baked goods that have looser gluten structures (a.k.a. those baked goods that warn you “do not overmix the batter/dough!”), yeast doesn’t work as well.
Wait, back up! You said that yeast is a living organism! Does that mean it’s not vegan?!
Yeasted breads are totally vegan – as long as they don’t have stuff like eggs and dairy in them!
Yeast is living in the same way that mushrooms and plants are living. All of these things grow naturally, but they don’t have nervous systems and can’t feel pain.
So the vast majority of people agree that yeast is vegan. Using it to make bread or ferment beer doesn’t cause it any suffering (yay!).
Same thing with sourdough starter, another type of biological leavening agent used in place of yeast in sourdough bread. You have to “feed” it with flour and water every few days to keep it active, but it’s not like an animal that feels pain.
So in short, using yeast or sourdough starter to make bread is totally vegan! Go forth and make delicious bread.
Physical Leavening Agents
You can actually create texture and lightness in your baked goods… without adding any other ingredients. Wow!
The secret is air. If you’ve been baking for a while, you’ve probably already used this without really knowing why. For instance, the first step of a lot of cookie recipes is to cream butter and sugar together for a few minutes until light and fluffy. This is to help the texture of the final product and create a delicate rise.
Air is also the leavening agent commonly used for the most delicate of baked goods.
In non-vegan baking, it’s common to whip lots of air into egg whites to make recipes like meringues and angel food cake. It’s a bit harder to make a direct one-for-one vegan substitute, but it is definitely possible!
With more and more people baking vegan, the community’s been finding cool new ways to turn your favorite foods vegan, without compromising too much on texture or flavor.
One example of this is aquafaba, or the liquid in a can of chickpeas. You can whip it up very similarly to egg whites, giving you lots of air to create a perfect texture. It makes an especially good vegan meringue substitute. This was only discovered in 2015 as a good egg white substitute, so bakers are still figuring out everything that aquafaba can possibly do.
So how else can baked goods be physically risen?
Steam! This is seen in baked goods like choux pastry and puff pastry.
In puff pastry, you work to create many layers out of pastry, with butter sandwiched in between. When the pastry is in the oven, the steam from the butter evaporates, making it puff and giving it texture and structure!
Similarly, as the liquid content of a choux pastry dough evaporates in the heat of the oven, the steam causes the pastry to rise.
I hope you have learned a lot about the different leavening agents you can use in vegan baking! Let me know if you have any questions or comments down below.
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