Vegan brioche buns which are buttery, fluffy and super easy to make! The buns can be made sweet or savoury and in a variety of sizes.
Is brioche vegan?
Brioche is a buttery French bread often eaten by itself or used in sweet or savoury dishes.
Traditionally, brioche is not vegan as the dough is laden with eggs, dairy milk and butter. Also, traditional brioche is often glazed with egg wash to give it a golden and shiny appearance and to trap in the moisture.
Much to my surprise, it's easy to veganise this French bread. I used simple substitutes such as vegan butter and non-dairy milk!
In traditional brioche, eggs add fat and act as a leavening agent. However, you don't needs eggs at all if you use a little extra vegan butter and enough yeast.
How to make vegan brioche
These vegan brioche buns uses the same ingredients (but slightly different ratios) as my Buttery Vegan Brioche Loaf recipe. In order to avoid repetion, head over there for step by step pictures.
This brioche bun recipe serves more people and makes 8 hand-sized buns. It's seriously an easy vegan bread recipe!
My biggest tip for making vegan brioche
It's essential that your brioche dough increases to double its size (or thereabouts) during the first rise. Unfortunately, if it doesn't double your final brioche will be dense and heavy.
To ensure your brioche doubles, you need to make sure:
- Your yeast is active
- The dough is placed in a WARM place. Unlike conventional bread, this french bread dough has butter which can inhibit its rise. So, if you place the dough in a warm spot, the butter will soften and your dough will rise easier.
If you use a glass bowl, you'll be able to see lots of bubbles and air pockets if your dough has risen successfully.
Shaping the vegan brioche buns
After you create 8 equal parts from your dough, you'll need to shape it. The key to shaping the buns is to make sure each has a smooth and taut top.
That will hide all the uneven parts of the dough underneath. Shaping the brioche well will ensure your final buns are smooth and evenly risen!
To visualise this, Joshua Weissman created a good Youtube video showing how to shape brioche buns (the link takes you to the exact part of the video).
After you bake your brioche buns
I recommend brushing the vegan buns with a sugar glaze as it makes them beautifully shiny and keeps some of their moisture in. Alternatively, you can brush the buns with aquafaba (the liquid from a can of chickpeas), although it won't be as shiny.
How to serve brioche buns?
This easy vegan bread recipe can be used in LOTS of ways:
- Spread jam or your favourite sweet spread on them and enjoy them fresh or toasted for breakfast
- Use stale brioche buns in a vegan french toast casserole.
- Fill them with a savoury filling and enjoy them as sliders, at home or for entertaining
- Make larger portions and use them as vegan brioche burger buns
- Or serve them as vegan dinner rolls!
More easy vegan bread recipes:
Did you know brioche dough can be used in SO many ways, from cinnamon rolls to babka? Here I've listed MANY ways you can use brioche dough. Here are some of my favourites:
- Buttery Vegan Brioche
- Sticky Cinnamon Buns
- Blueberry Cinnamon Rolls
- Vegan Chocolate Babka
- Jam Donut Babka
- Vegan Pumpkin Dinner Rolls
See how I used the dough to make a wreath:
Buttery Vegan Brioche Buns
Ingredients
- 3 cups (375g) plain or all-purpose flour
- ¾ cup (190g) dairy free milk, such as almond, soy or coconut, warm and as needed
- 2 tablespoons (25g) cane sugar, or coconut sugar
- ½ cup (115g) melted vegan butter, or olive oil
- 1 tablespoon instant dried yeast*
- ½ teaspoon salt, if using unsalted butter
- 1 tablespoon any light-coloured sweetener, such as rice malt syrup or maple syrup, or aquafaba
Instructions
To make the brioche dough:
- Add all the ingredients except the liquid sweetener to a large bowl and mix until combined. Knead the dough for at least 5 minutes or until the dough becomes soft and elastic. If you're using a stand mixer, use the dough hook and knead until the dough is smooth and comes away from the sides of the bowl. If the dough is a little dry, add a little more milk and knead again. If the dough is still sticking on the bowl, add a little flour and knead again. The softer your dough is, the softer your brioche buns will be!
Resting the dough:
- Leave the dough in the bowl and cover with a damp tea towel (the damp towel prevents the dough from drying out). Leave it in a warm area to double in size for at least 1 hour. You can also leave it to rise in the fridge overnight, as long as you allow the dough to come to room temperature before you use it the next day.**
- When the dough is puffy, divide it into 8 even parts (about 90g each). Shape each part into a smooth round ball. Arrange the balls on a lined baking tray with about 5 cm (2 inches) between each one. Cover the tray with a damp tea towel and leave it in a warm area to rest for another 30 minutes - 1 hour. The dough should increase in size by around 50%.
Baking the brioche buns:
- When the dough is puffy again, preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).
- Bake the buns the oven for 15-20 minutes or until the surface is golden brown. The buns are ready when you can tap the bottom of one and it sounds hollow.
- To make the brioche glaze, combine the liquid sweetener with 1 tablespoon of water. When the brioche buns are still hot, brush the top with the sugar glaze syrup then allow it to rest.
- Enjoy the brioche immediately. Like all home-made breads, the brioche is best eaten the day it is baked. Alternatively, store the buns in an airtight room temperature for 3-5 days or in the freezer for up to 1 month. Warm up the brioche before you eat it again!
Notes
Please leave a comment below if you made this recipe, have any questions or thoughts! Your comment will help other readers and Rainbow Nourishments.
Is the liquid sweetener a must?
No it isn't, it just helps make the buns shiny and golden!
I used a super high fat coconut milk and it made mine dense but also fluffy at the same time. Imagine 90's couches. Overall the recipe was straight forward and I would try it again.
These are the most incredible rolls I’ve ever made. I loved how easy the dough was to work with, and they’re so soft and buttery. This is going to be my new go-to roll recipe! I can’t wait to try to make burger buns with this dough!
Aw that's music to my ears, yay! These would be amazing burger buns - I need to do that sometime soon too :). Thanks so much for leaving a comment x
Within a week I've made the brioche loaf, the buns and donuts out of another batch of bun dough. You could say I'm a fan of your recipes. 🙂
Oh you're amazing!!!! Thanks so much for your ongoing support and taking the time to leave a comment - I appreciate it a lot! x
Hi, this sounds exciting... Is it best to use bread flour or plain? Thanks!
Both flours work really well for this recipe so it's personal preference :). Bread flour makes the buns a little more 'chewy' like traditional bread and plain flour makes them a little more 'melt in your mouth' and cakey. Hope that helps!
Thank you! I'll give both a go... I know they will be a hit in my house 😋
I'm actually trying them side-by-side right now! (I had to double the recipe, and since I happened to have AP and bread flours, I simply made 2 batches concurrently.)
Anyway, both flours work extraordinarily well! The batch with bread flour needed a *little* less time to knead, rose a *little* higher, and was a *little* easier to handle, but I don't think that I would have noticed these differences if I had tried them a few days apart.
It may be helpful to know that I needed to use 85g vegan butter (Miyoko's) and 30g olive oil. (I decided to double AFTER grocery shopping.) I also mixed each dough at first with a Danish dough whisk, and then kneaded by hand inside my mixing vessels. Each bun used 135g of dough; I made 10 total (5 each). Tomorrow, they will be toasted for veggie burger buns!
I used the bread flour and oh my! They tasted just like the Marks and Spencer ones we used to have when I was a child! Literally the best thing I have ever made! Thank you so much, you are a genius!
I made this brioche for burger buns, but they're so tasty that I enjoyed the first one just with butter, fresh out of the oven. They taste, look, and smell amazing. It's great to be able to make vegan brioche without aquafaba. Thank you!
I'm soo glad to hear that! And 100% re the aquafaba! Thanks so much x
These turned out FANTASTIC! I made a couple different shapes and sizes. The dough was super easy to make, smooth and easy to handle. I used oat milk and earth balance butter. Delicious, fluffy, final product.
Aw YAY, that's amazing Judy!! Thanks so much for your feedback!
Hi!
Is the tablespoon measurement for the yeast a 15ml (US) tablespoon or 20ml (Aus) tablespoon please.
Hi Dim! I used a 15mL tablespoon for the yeast :).
Hello! So I followed the recipe word for word, but my dough didn’t rise, which left the rolls hard and dense. I allowed and hour and half for them to rise, when they didn’t I placed three aside to rise overnight- which they still didn’t. When you say a warm place, what does that entail temperature wise. To ensure I had a warm place for the dough to rise, I preheated the oven, then let it cool to just a light warm and placed the dough in the oven for an hour to rise (due to it being 65 degrees in my house).
If you have any suggestions please let me know 🙂
Hi Julia! Oh no, sorry to hear your brioche buns didn't rise! Did you have a look at my vegan brioche post which lists a few ways to troubleshoot brioche if it doesn't grow on the first rise? For temperature, I'd recommend around 77°F (25°C). If your oven was around this temperature, there are some other reasons:
1. The yeast was old or you used a slightly different yeast which needs to be bloomed beforehand
2. Your brioche dough may've been too dry. The dough should always be soft, supple and a little tacky (but not sticking to surfaces), after kneading, before the rise and after. Their moisture makes it easier for the dough to rise
I hope that helps! Feel free to email me if any issues!
Hi dear!! I just did your recipe substituting the yeast for 100gr whole wheat sourdough (100%) and used half white half bread flour (and like 50gr whole), then added choco chips after kneading it. I also wanted to try the Tanzhong method so I took 20gr fl with some 60 milk and 20 water, which made it veeery easy to knead by hand (plus autolyse). I had them longer time to rise of course (like 4’5h), then fridge overnight and 3 hours for the second rise once shaped into balls (made a log, cutter and rolled as Weissman). The thing is that it was always quite tight and easy to handle and it didn’t double neither in the first or the second any more than like 1/3, although they rose nicely in the oven (and some people don’t even let them rise for a second time!). My problem is that after 20 min (at 175 even) they developed some crust I wasn’t looking for, so they’re not as fluffy as I dreamed of haha I tried both brushing with milk+sweetener before and after baking. I can’t stop thing what might exactly be the reason, since other recipes for hot cross buns use also bread flour and sourdough and look perfectly fluffy (brushed with egg tho). Or was it the brush? since original recipe brushes with eggs wash it also doesn’t make sense to me... Applying the brush after did soften them a bit, but still wondering what could be the cause of their kinda toughness.
Flavour tho is very nice so thanks a lot for your recipes and your time and effort 🙂
Hi Paula, sounds like you made lots of adjustments! Good on you for being adventurous :).
I think the main issue is that whole wheat dough doesn't rise as easily as normal wheat dough. Whole wheat dough is also more absorbent so it sounds like your dough was too dry (which affects rising) and developed a crust due to it!
Also enriched doughs (dough with butter) rise a little differently from sourdough/bread dough. The butter slows down rising! Check out my post on sourdough cinnamon rolls for a guide on making vegan sourdough brioche. The dough is basically a brioche recipe! Hope that helps!
Worked the first time! And I used spelt flour too. I'm always anxious making recipes with yeast because it worries me whether the dough will rise. But this recipe worked a treat! I also mixed in some pumpkin spice mix, it definitely made it extra special. Will be making this again & again!
Hi Vai! Thanks for your lovely comment and so glad it worked with spelt. I'll have to do that next time. I hear you about making things with yeast (I used to be like that)! I realise the most important thing is to make sure the dough is warm enough to help activate the yeast and make it rise! Thanks again!!