If you’ve read my blogs, you know I love breakfast and brunch. I’m often working weekend mornings, but when I’m not, I love to make a big showy breakfast for my loved ones, and when I’m particularly well rested, I love to make tender, flaky, (vegan) buttery biscuits with lots of fixins. As much as I love my food processor, mixer, and blender (and pretty much anything culinary and high tech), nothing beats making biscuits by hand, just like my great grandma used to make. At least I think that's how she made them… when I was a kid, I couldn’t see over the counter to watch her make them.
Most of us know that the best way to get tender biscuits is to use a very cold fat, usually butter. And for those who read my blogs regularly, you know I’m a big fan of Earth Balance non-dairy buttery sticks. Butter gives us that tender flakiness we like, but what about those extra flaky layers that you can see from far away? How do we get those?
Lamination!
Laminating dough is the process of rolling a chilled-fat dough, folding it on itself, and rolling it again. This is how puff pastry is made, but that’s made over the course of hours (I promise that laminating biscuits takes mere minutes!). This results in those yummy unbeatable layers we all love.
Vegan Flaky Biscuits
This recipe makes about 8 biscuits if you make rounds, but if you make squares, you can get more of a yield, about 12 biscuits.
1¼ cup almond milk
1 tbsp white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, or lemon juice
3 ¾ cup all purpose flour
1 tbsp fine sea salt
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp granulated sugar
¼ tsp baking soda
2 sticks (1 cup) Earth Balance, cut into ½-inch cubes, and chilled until very firm, plus more for melting and brushing the tops
In a small bowl, stir together the almond milk and vinegar or lemon juice. Let sit for 5 minutes or until curdled. This is your vegan buttermilk.
In a large bowl, stir together the flour, salt, baking powder, sugar, and baking soda until combined. Sprinkle in the cubes of Earth Balance, and using a fork or a pastry blender, mash the butter into the mixture until the Earth Balance is the size of small peas (for our intents and purposes here, let’s call it EB).
Stir in the “buttermilk” until combined. The mixture will feel a little dry but rest assured it will all work out.
Here’s where the lamination takes place. Turn the contents out onto a work surface, and pat the dough into a rough square about 1 inch thick. Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces, and place each piece on top of each other. It’s gonna feel weird so bear with me!
Here, I'm using biscuits I already cut for visual purposes, since I forgot to film while doing this particular step.
Pat the mixture a little bit with your hands, and then using a rolling pin, roll the dough out until it’s 1-inch thick. Divide into 12 pieces. Place the biscuits on a parchment lined sheet pan and brush with melted EB, and place the sheet pan in the freezer for 10-15 minutes to resolidify the EB. Place in a 400 degree oven until the biscuits are golden brown and flaky, about 15-20 minutes.
Serve these biscuits warm with jam, nut butter, more EB, or a vegan gravy. They are sure to impress your non-vegan friends!
