Bryanna Clark Grogan’s Vegan Feast Kitchen/ 23rd Century Table

                                                           

Here is the bran, close-up.

Well, these turned out to be some of the very best biscuits I've ever had, and the flavor made them worth the extra step of sifting. They rose well, and layered nicely, were crunchy on the outside, and had nary a touch of any lingering chemical-y baking powder flavor. (If you plan to make these often, you could sift a whole bunch of flour and freeze it for spur of the moment biscuit binges!) 

Thank you Edna Lewis and your expertise!  This will now be my go-to biscuit recipe!

I used my Low-Fat "Corn Butter" spread on these biscuits

  

2 1/2 cups SIFTED whole wheat pastry flour (bran removed and saved for use in baking, cereal, etc.; see Note above)—you can use home-ground soft wheat flour; the white soft wheat is a good choice         

1 3/4 tsp Homemade Baking Powder (see recipe below)     

3/4 tsp fine sea salt     

1/4 cup vegan butter, such as my palm oil-free Buttah, frozen (see my recipe here) (UPDATE: you can also use my homemade palm oil-free shortening, OR use frozen extra-virgin olive oil, which I freeze in ice cube trays for baking-- 2 T. per cube and they freeze solid!)

9 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon soy milk, hemp milk, or coconut milk beverage, or homemade nut milk

2 tsp lemon juice        

2 tablespoons melted vegan butter for brushing the tops   

Preheat the oven to 500ºF.

In a medium bowl mix together the sifted whole wheat pastry flour, the Homemade Baking Powder, and salt with a whisk.

Cut the vegan butter into 1/2-inch chunks (approximately).Add the frozen vegan butter chunks and work with your fingers until about half of the vegan butter is finely blended with the flour and the other half is in pea-sized pieces. In a cup, mix together the non-dairy milk and lemon juice. The mixture should curdle immediately. Pour into the flour/vegan butter mixture and stir quickly just until it all comes together.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface—a silicone baking mat is good, or even a piece of baking parchment. Pat the dough out into a rectangle about 1/2-inch thick. fold the ends over towards the middle, pat out again and fold again. Repeat once more. Pat it out once more, evenly this time) to about 3/4-inch thick. Cut biscuits close together with a 2 to 2 1/4-inch round biscuit cutter, without twisting the cutter in the dough. Place them just barely touching on a baking sheet (I use a dark one for more crust on the bottom; you can line it with baking parchment if you like).

I don’t exactly re-roll the scraps. I kind of push the edges of them together so that they sort of fit together like a puzzle.  Then I fold the mass over itself once and pat or roll gently to 3/4-inch thick and get a couple more biscuits out of it, but they always look a bit raggedy!  Other people just bake the scraps (sometimes brushed with melted vegan butter and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar) around the edge of the pan for the kids (or the cook!) to munch on.

You can see that the 2 on the Left in front were the ones made with the pushed-together scraps!

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Check partway through and turn the pan around if they aren’t baking evenly. They should be golden. Brush the tops with the melted vegan butter. Serve hot with your favorite accompaniments—jam, marmalade, agave nectar, vegan butter, citrus curd—and don’t forget that gravy is also a possibility!

NOTE: If you keep some until later in the day or the next day (I wouldn't recommend any more than that; and keep them in a paper bag, not plastic) heat them quickly in a 400 ºF oven to crisp them up—do not microwave!

 Nutrition Facts (An abbreviated version: I don’t have the stats on home-sifted whole wheat pastry flour, so I have omitted the fiber, carbohydrate and protein content.)

Nutrition (per one 2-inch biscuit): 198.6 calories; 28% calories from fat; 6.5g total fat; 0.0mg cholesterol; 296.5mg sodium.

HOMEMADE BAKING POWDER

Makes 6 tablespoons

This is a very common recipe online. Some people add a bit of cornstarch or arrowroot, but I didn't bother.

Mix together well and store in a tightly covered dry jar or container:

1/4 cup cream of tartar

2 tablespoons baking soda

Simple as that!

I hope you enjoy this recipe!

This is going to be a very brief post because I'm cleaning house and making food for some visitors.  But I've been wanting to post this stew for a couple of weeks, but I got sidetracked with rhubarb and spoonbread.

My sister's DNA ancestry test confirmed that there is some Basque on the Spanish side of my father's family, which gives me a special interest in that particular cuisine.  I've only scratched the surface so far, but have discovered that bean stews, or one-dish bean-pots, are very popular in Basque cooking.  They usually contain meat, but that's easily remedied with vegan sausages, seitan, tempeh, etc., as well as full-flavored vegan broths. I look forward to trying other variations on the theme.

We had a guest when I made this, and she was very enthusiastic in her praise!

Printable Recipe

For some reason, I've been obsessed with spoonbread this last week or so.  No, I didn't grow up in the American South (though some of maternal ancestors were from Arkansas, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia).  But I do love corn in any form and making a good vegan spoonbread has been a goal of mine for quite a few years.  Today I'm offering you two versions.  Neither of them is the old-fashioned soufflé type (I haven't mastered a vegan version of that yet!).  The old-fashioned spoonbread is made from cooked cornmeal mush, either yellow or white, eggs (often with the whites beaten separately), butter and milk (or cream).  No wonder John Edgerton, author of Southern Food, wrote that it is "the lightest, richest, and most delicious of all cornmeal dishes, a veritable cornbread soufflé."

The spoonbread varieties made with un-separated eggs are heavier, more of an "everyday" spoonbread, I suppose. These are the types that are best suited to being made vegan, but I have plans to tackle the soufflé version soon!

I tried a couple of vegan versions made with cooked mush, but, so far, they have been on the heavy side, so I'm going to have to do more work on that.  For the moment, I decided to try a more modern version, and to re-visit a type of cornbread that I made for years, that I didn't know was also often referred to as a type of spoonbread.  I was aiming for a reasonably light, very moist product (but not gooey) that could be scooped out of the pan. Unfortunately, the modern versions contain less corn than the original spoonbread, but I'm going to see if I can remedy that in future.

My first recipe is a moist, sumptuous "casserole bread" that utilizes a biscuit mix and canned cream-style corn (which actually IS vegan).  It is definitely a modern version of this bread type, but a popular one, judging by the avalanche of related recipes that I found online!  I make my own biscuit mix (recipe provided below) and my vegan recipe avoids not only the eggs, but the sour cream, excessive butter or margarine, cheese, and heavy cream that is called for in many similar recipes.

The second recipe is actually a cornbread that I made for years and never thought of as a spoonbread-- it's a cornbread that's made in such a way that it ends up with a creamy layer of "custard" on the bottom.  It's made in the same way as a pudding cake, with liquid poured over the batter at the last minute before baking. But, in my research, I started to see this type of cornbread referred to as a spoonbread, so I decided to veganize that recipe, too.  It's so comforting!  

I happen to own 3 versions of Joy of Cooking, so I looked up this recipe in all of them to see if it had changed much over the years-- and, indeed, it has, as the ratio of cornmeal to flour has gradually changed. In my 1946 version, the recipe contained 6 tablespoons of cornmeal and 2 tablespoons of bread flour.  In my 1973 version, the recipe contained 1/2 cup cornmeal and 1/4 cup flour.  In the 1997 version, the recipe contains 6 tablespoons cornmeal to 1/2 cup flour (actually, they have doubled that to make a "fatter" bread).

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Spoonbread (particularly soufflé type) is often served with special meals and holiday meals, but any type makes a great breakfast food, drizzled with a bit of maple syrup.  It's also delicious with spicy beans and stews, or with cooked greens.

NOTE ABOUT EGG REPLACERS:  In these recipes, I used powdered commercial egg replacers because they are easily available and can be used by most people. However, if you happen to have a copy of either of the delightful books by Crescent Dragonwagon, The Cornbread Gospels or Bean by Bean: a Cookbook (on p. 255), you can use her inventive homemade egg sub that she calls "Eggscellence" (on pps. 352-353). (You can see the recipe here, too.)   I am planning to play with using the new vegan egg yolk sub, The Vegg (UPDATE: The Vegg is not available in Canada at this time) and also Aquafaba, in future as well.


Printable Recipe (includes Biscuit Mix recipe)


   Enjoy!

Printable Recipe

BRYANNA'S VEGAN PERSIAN-STYLE STEW WITH RHUBARB AND MINT