How to make dairy-free bread pudding

Our journey toward a dairy-free lifestyle is still in progress. Some steps are big (like finding a plant-based milk that ticks off all our boxes for flavor, texture, availability, and cost) and others are much smaller, but even the small ones get us farther along the road. This past week, we overcame yet one more small hurdle in our way: figuring out how 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, one of our early failed experiments along the dairy-free road proved to be the key to this particular puzzle. When we first started looking for a sustainable and inexpensive alternative to cow's milk, one of the first things we tried was homemade oat milk, which we quickly rejected because it turned so thick and gluey when heated as to make hot cocoa undrinkable. However, it occurred to me that this bug could actually be a feature where bread pudding was concerned, since thickening up was exactly the result we wanted and couldn't get with the nut milks. And since oats are cheap and we always have some at home, it wouldn't cost much to try the experiment.

So, last week, when I happened to spot happened to spot a loaf of white bread on the "free stuff" table at a local church, it struck me as a perfect opportunity to try out this new recipe. However, in my eagerness, I snatched it up without noticing the words "gluten free" on the label. When I discovered my error, I was all set to abort the experiment, because using this bread would mean changing two variables at once from our original recipe. If it was a failure, we wouldn't know whether the bread or the milk was to blame; if it was a success, we wouldn't know whether it would still work with regular bread. But Brian persuaded me it couldn't hurt to try, since we already had the bread, the milk would cost us little, and more data is always a good thing.

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.