Can You Use Vegan Butter For Baking?

If you stick to a vegan diet or simply like to limit your dairy intake, then you probably use vegan butter in place of traditional butter. The ingredients in dairy-free butter vary. Vegan butter is typically made from a combination of water with a plant-based oil, or combination of oils, such as olive and avocado oil. If you use vegan butter, then you may be wondering if you can use it for baking, too. To find out, Daily Meal spoke with an expert: Kierin Baldwin, the chef-instructor of pastry and baking arts at the New York City campus of the Institute of Culinary Education, which is now offering a free series of virtual classes focusing on fundamental pastry and baking techniques.

The good news is that vegan butter can be used to replace regular butter in baking — there are just some details that you need to keep in mind. Baldwin explains, "When swapping it for dairy butter, you want to be aware of the fat and liquid content of the butter you are using and try to choose one that replicates the ratio of those two components in dairy butter as closely as possible. That means you want them to have about 75 to 80% fat content." For example, Naturli is one brand that sells vegan butter that specifically boasts an 80% fat content.

Additionally, Baldwin advises that you use vegan butter with a "firm consistency," rather than the type that is meant to be spreadable. This likely means buying vegan butter sticks rather than the version that comes in a tub.

Along with usually having different fat and liquid contents, vegan and regular butter also have different melting points. Kierin Baldwin explains, "Butter fat also melts at a fairly low temperature compared to a lot of vegetable fats, so when subbing vegan butters, which often have a higher melting point, make sure your pastries are baked at the correct temperature for long enough so that the fats can fully melt and provide lift and flakiness or tenderness if important."

In other words, if you don't melt the vegan butter during the mixing stage (as some recipes call for), then you'll need to make sure that you have the exact right oven temperature and cooking time so that the vegan butter melts thoroughly. In fact, periodically checking your oven temperature is essential – the temperature can be inaccurate by several degrees, which can make a difference in situations like this.

Additionally, there may be a taste difference, depending on the type of vegan butter that you use. Baldwin says, "Make sure you like the flavor of the butter you are using before baking with it, since any flavors in the vegan butter will come through in the finished product." For example, a vegan butter made with cashews is going to taste different than one made with, say, canola oil — so, if it's a new brand to you, you want to taste test before you use it for any baked goods.

So, now we know that vegan butter is suitable for baking, but does it work for all baked goods? Kierin Baldwin says, "It used to be that flaky and laminated pastries were very hard to replicate using vegan butters, but with so many new brands of vegan butter on the market, if you have the right vegan butter, you can make just about any type of pastry these days."

This is why it's important to check the fat percentage of any vegan butter that you use. You want it to behave as closely to real butter as possible.

Baldwin adds, "Some companies even make vegan butter specifically blended for use in flaky and laminated pastries in addition to ones made for other uses. With good products and good technique, you can sub vegan butter in the majority of baked goods." All this is to say, substituting real butter for dairy-free is way easier than you think – with the right vegan butter, you should be able to swap out the real butter one-to-one.