Vegan French Toast
I know, vegan french toast sounds like an oxymoron, right? But I had a lot of leftover chickpea flour and was looking for something to do with it, and came across this recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance.
To make the french toast you mix together soy milk and soy creamer (I used all soymilk), cornstarch (I used arrowroot), and chickpea flour (besan) into a slurry. You soak your sliced, stale bread in the slurry briefly, then fry the bread in an oiled cast iron skillet.
The recipe worked surprisingly well. I wouldn’t say it tastes exactly like egg- and butter-based french toast, but it was certainly reminiscent of traditional french toast, and tasty. I mean, how can you go wrong with fried bread? This recipe has basically no nutritional content, so I might be more inclined to use it as the base for a dessert rather than breakfast, but it’s certainly an interesting recipe, that I’d like to work with. If I make it again I’d definitely add something: perhaps cardamom, or cinnamon, or a fruit compote. I haven’t figured it out yet, but I know this recipe has the potential to create a very tasty, and also very interesting dish. I’d like to hear anyone else’s ideas of what to do with this recipe. I’d love some way to incorporate in some vegetables, if possible. I thought it perhaps could be used to make a layered vegetable bread pudding, but I’d be afraid it would get soggy, when one of the appeals of this recipe is the crispness of the bread.
I’d also like to try it without the chickpea flour, not because I think it’s unnecessary, but because I’d like to understand better exactly what role the chickpea flour is serving.
Note that although there’s no added salt in the recipe, I found the french toast plenty salty, I’m not sure why. Where is the salt coming from?
