Vegan Biscuits: The Best Recipe & Common Mistakes To Avoid (2024)

If you’re searching for the ultimate vegan biscuit recipe, look no further! Our guide delivers everything you need to create buttery, flaky, and simply irresistible vegan buttermilk biscuits.

Discover our easy and foolproof recipe for vegan biscuits, the perfect companion for lazy mornings or as a side to hearty dinners. Ideal for those who crave the flakiness and buttery goodness of classic biscuits but prefer plant-based ingredients, this easy recipe is your ticket to the most satisfying biscuits you’ve ever tasted. It harnesses the magic of vegan buttermilk made with soymilk and apple cider vinegar, blended with the richness of cultured vegan butter to create biscuits that are not just good for a vegan option but are simply excellent, no qualifiers needed.

Imagine pulling a tray of these golden, perfectly layered biscuits out of the oven, their buttery aroma enveloping your kitchen just waiting to be sliced open. Turn that vision into a reality with this recipe that shows achieving bakery-level biscuits at home doesn’t require professional skills or hard-to-find ingredients.

These biscuits love to be served as part of a vegan breakfast or brunch. They are perfect with a JUST Egg Folded, Violife Cheese, and a vegan sausage patty or bacon. These are also killer with some smoky homemade shiitake bacon!

Serve them with a tofu scramble, smother them with gravy, or make them a blend of savory and sweet with vegan whipped cream and strawberries. Use them to make vegan bbq pulled pork biscuits, serve alongside vegan split pea soup, creamy roasted parsnip soup, creamy cauliflower soup, and this New England vegan clam chowder. Or simply spread them with vegan butter and a touch of maple syrup for a simple yet super delicious snack.

Why You’ll Love This Vegan Biscuits Recipe

There’s so much to love about this vegan biscuit recipe. It makes biscuits that are:

• flaky
• buttery
• light and airy
• vegan
• perfect for brunch or a side dish at dinner, and
• easy to make!

Key Ingredients For These Vegan Buttermilk Biscuits

This vegan buttermilk biscuit recipe has only 5 ingredients! Let’s go over what they are and how they contribute to the most irresistible biscuit you’ve ever tasted:

• Soymilk: Lays the creamy foundation for vegan buttermilk, bringing moisture and richness without dairy.
• Apple Cider Vinegar: Thickens the soymilk to mimic traditional buttermilk, adding tanginess and making the biscuits tender.
• Self-Rising Flour: Pre-mixed with baking powder and salt, this simplifies the recipe and ensures a consistent, fluffy texture. Self-rising flour is specially formulated for baked goods like biscuits, where a light, airy structure is key. It eliminates the guesswork of balancing leavening agents, making it superior to all-purpose flour for biscuits. You can substitute all-purpose flour with baking powder, but self-rising flour’s precise blend yields better rise and tenderness.
• Salt: Enhances flavors, balancing the richness of the biscuits.
• Cold Vegan Butter: Creates those sought-after flaky layers and imparts a buttery taste, crucial for that classic biscuit taste profile. For best results, use a cultured vegan butter like Miyoko’s, but any vegan butter will also work here.

How To Make Vegan Biscuits: Step-By-Step Instructions

Follow these easy steps and you’ll be on your way to the best vegan biscuits you’ve ever tasted!

Step One: Preheat oven to 450. Line a small baking sheet with parchment paper.

Step Two: Whisk the soymilk and apple cider vinegar together. Combine the flour and salt in a large prep bowl.

Step Three: Grate the chilled vegan butter into the flour mixture. Add the vegan buttermilk to the bowl.

Step Four: Fold the wet and dry ingredients together until just combined. Do not overmix.

Step Five: Lightly flour your work surface. Turn your dough onto the floured surface. Add a little flour over the top if it’s too sticky to work with.

Step Six: Laminate your dough. This technique helps to create flaky layers within the biscuits by trapping pockets of fat between the layers of dough. This technique contributes to the tender, layered texture found in flaky biscuits.

Start by folding the part of the dough closest to you up to the middle. Then fold the part furthest away from you to the middle.

Rotate once 90 degrees, then repeat this process twice. Warm hands will heat the butter resulting in less flaky biscuits so work fast or use a chilled rolling pin!

Step Seven: Press the dough into a uniform thickness (use a rolling pin if you’d like), and cut out 6 biscuits using a 3-inch biscuit cutter.

Step Eight: Place the biscuits onto a baking sheet so the edges are touching. (This will help them rise properly!)

Bake for 18 minutes, or until the tops are golden. Brush the tops with a little melted vegan butter towards the end for a golden-brown finish. Serve right away!

Common Mistakes To Avoid For Perfect Homemade Vegan Biscuits

Making homemade biscuits might seem straightforward, yet several common missteps can stand between you and biscuit perfection. Steering clear of these pitfalls not only elevates your biscuits to that sought-after golden perfection but also ensures each bite is as flaky and buttery as intended.

Not Keeping Ingredients and Equipment Chilled

The secret to those irresistible flaky layers? Cold fat. Using chilled ingredients, including the vegan butter, and flour, and even chilling your mixing bowl, rolling pin, and biscuit cutter, prevents the fat from melting before baking. This ensures that, as the biscuits bake, the fat creates steam and lifts each layer, resulting in that coveted flaky texture.

Skipping Self-Rising Flour

Self-rising flour is pre-mixed with a precise amount of baking powder and salt, making it a foolproof base for light and airy biscuits. While you can substitute with all-purpose flour and baking powder, the pre-mixed convenience of self-rising flour guarantees the perfect rise every time, avoiding the dense or flat biscuits that mismeasurements can cause.

Forgoing the Cheese Grater for Butter

Grating cold vegan butter into your flour mixture helps distribute it evenly without overworking the dough. This technique ensures small, consistent pieces of fat throughout the dough, essential for achieving those beautiful layers in your biscuits.

Not Chilling The Vegan Biscuits Before Baking

A brief stint in the refrigerator before baking helps the fat solidify again, contributing to the flakiness of the biscuits. This step also helps the biscuits maintain their shape, preventing them from spreading too much in the oven.

Overworking the Dough

Handling the dough too much activates gluten, leading to tough biscuits. Gentle, minimal handling is key; mix just until the ingredients come together.

Skipping Laminating the Dough

Laminating, or folding the dough, creates multiple layers of dough and fat, crucial for the flaky texture. Even a simple fold, done twice, can dramatically enhance the layers and overall texture of your biscuits.

Twisting the Biscuit Cutter

When cutting out your biscuits, push straight down without twisting. Twisting seals the edges, hindering the rise and preventing those tall, flaky layers from forming.

Not Letting the Biscuits Touch

Placing the unbaked biscuits so they slightly touch each other helps them rise straight and tall, leveraging support from each other, rather than spreading outwards.

Keeping these tips in mind will have you on your way to homemade biscuit perfection—flaky, buttery, and mind-blowingly delicious.

What Is Self-Rising Flour?

Self-rising flour is the low-key hero in baking, a blend that quietly does its job, ensuring your creations puff up perfectly without the fuss. Unlike its all-purpose cousin, self-rising flour comes pre-mixed with baking powder and a touch of salt, offering a one-stop solution for achieving consistent rise and texture. Its protein content sits comfortably in the middle range, usually around 8.5 to 10.5%, which strikes the perfect balance between tender and structured. This makes it ideal for tender baked goods like biscuits, scones, and pancakes, where a delicate crumb is key.

The magic of self-rising flour lies in its simplicity and precision. When you substitute all-purpose flour and baking powder to mimic self-rising, the ratio can be a bit of a gamble, potentially leading to flat or overly risen baked goods. Self-rising flour eliminates the guesswork, ensuring just the right amount of leavening every time. This unique blend not only simplifies the baking process but also enhances the texture and flavor of your baked goods, making it a valuable secret weapon in your pantry.

Which Biscuits Brands Are Vegan?

If you’d rather buy than bake your biscuits, there are plenty of options available! These brands are all vegan or accidentally vegan. Always check the label as ingredients can change. Some brands say they “may” contain milk:

• Annie’s Organic Flaky Biscuits
• Bisquick Mix
• Grands!™ Southern Homestyle Southern Recipe Biscuits
• Grands!™ Southern Homestyle Buttermilk Biscuits
• Immaculate Organic Flaky Biscuits

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This post was last updated on March 5, 2024.