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A London bakery claims it has created a vegan croissant to rival its butter-riddled counterpart.
The Artisan Bakery in West London spent six months creating the recipe, along with vegan alternatives to pain au chocolat and pain au raisin.
According to CEO Andrew Murray the biggest challenge was replacing butter – a major component in traditional recipes – which they did with rape seed oil and sustainably sourced palm oil.
Risk
Murray told PBN: “Our breads have always been vegan, with the huge trend in flexitarianism and responsible eating, coupled with the fact that high quality vegan pastries are incredibly elusive, it made sense for us to try to answer that gap by experimenting with our pastries.
“Our biggest challenge was to develop a type of shortening which stood up to the taste of French butter, it was incredibly important to get the recipe exactly right.
“Any pastry chef would agree that the defining qualities of a good croissant are warmth, butteriness, lightness and fluffiness, so replacing half the ingredients was a big risk; which is why it’s taken us six months in development to create the perfect, equivalent, if not better, recipe.”
‘Amazing’
Gavin Fernback, owner of vegan Camden cafe The Fields Beneath, added: “We are a cafe that went vegan and we always said we will only put food on the counter that could effectively be secretly vegan.
“The Artisan Bakery has produced such amazing plant-based croissants, we’d bet our lease on no-one telling the difference.
“They’re better than any croissant we’ve ever had and we’ll be increasing our orders from next week as the response has been incredible.”
