Our journey in the direction of a dairy-free way of life remains in development. Some steps are big (like locating a plant-based totally milk that ticks off all our packing containers for flavor, texture, availability, and charge) and others are a whole lot smaller, however even the small ones get us farther along the street. This past week, we overcame however one extra small hurdle in our way: identifying the manner to make bread pudding without cow's milk.
The first time we first tried making a dairy-free version of this dessert, using some walnut milk we got as a freebie, it didn't work at all well. It took ages to bake, and even when Brian finally gave up and pulled it out, it was still kind of soft and soupy, not firm like a bread pudding should be. And when we tried the same experiment with our favorite almond milk, the result was much the same. Based on these two failures, Brian was inclined to suspect that bread pudding just wouldn't work without dairy, and if we were serious about giving up milk, we'd have to give up this dessert, too. However, I'd seen dairy-free bread pudding recipes online that looked like they had the right consistency, so I thought there must be some way to do it.
As it turns out, taken into consideration one of our early failed experiments alongside the dairy-unfastened street proved to be the important thing to this unique puzzle. When we first began out searching out a sustainable and less steeply-priced alternative to cow's milk, one of the first subjects we attempted become domestic made oat milk, which we brief rejected as it grew to turn out to be so thick and gluey when heated as to make warm cocoa undrinkable. However, it happened to me that this computer virus have to genuinely be a function where bread pudding changed into concerned, when you consider that thickening up modified into precisely the stop end result we wanted and couldn't get with the nut milks. And considering the fact that oats are reasonably-priced and we typically have a few at domestic, it would no longer fee plenty to try the test.
So, remaining week, as soon as I occurred to discover passed off to become aware of a loaf of white bread at the
For the test, he whipped up a batch of homemade oat milk using 1/4 cup of oats and 1 1/3 cups of water. He soaked the oats in the water for around 10 minutes, then blended them. This produced 1 1/3 cups of unsweetened oat milk, which he then used in our standard bread pudding recipe. And as soon as it came out of the oven, we could see the results looked more promising than our previous attempts with nut milks. The surface looked firm and lightly browned, just like it should. But the proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Would the taste and texture be right once it was dished out?
The answer was yes, mostly. The texture was firm, not soupy like the puddings we'd made with nut milks, but it was a bit sticky. We have no way of knowing whether this was an effect of the oat milk, the gluten-free bread, or a combination of the two; we'll have to try the recipe again with a conventional bread to see. Also, this pudding was noticeably less sweet than it is when we make it with dairy milk, presumably because cows' milk contains some natural sugar and oat milk has essentially none. Brian figures if we try the recipe again, he'll soak the oats a little longer and add a tablespoon of sugar to the milk. But even with these minor flaws, the pudding was definitely edible, and much closer to the original recipe than we'd ever come with either walnut or almond milk.
Now, this bread pudding recipe isn't truly vegan, since it still contains eggs. However, as I've noted before, our goal isn't to develop vegan superpowers; we're just trying to reduce the carbon footprint of our diet, and eggs are fairly trivial offenders as far as carbon is concerned. We might still experiment later with combining the oat milk this recipe with an egg substitute (such as soy flour and water, or ground flaxseeds) to see if we can make a genuinely vegan version, but that's mostly a matter of curiosity. If we can just perfect a dairy-free version, we'll be satisfied.
Next challenge: coming up with a vegan whipped cream to serve with it that isn't a complete fiasco.
