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Rise and shine! The most delicious Vegan French Toast is on the breakfast menu! It’s made by thick-sliced bread in flavorful mix of ground flaxseed, non dairy milk and warm spices. This French toast will make any morning instantly special. The perfect recipe for a lazy weekend, Christmas morning, birthdays, or anytime you want to make an amazing breakfast the whole family will enjoy!
The Best Vegan French Toast Recipe!
I’ve tried a ton of vegan French toast recipes and could NEVER find one that was as good as the original…so I created my own. AND OH BUDDY is this French toast SO GOOD even without the eggs! This is my go-to weekend breakfast for when we really want to treat ourselves. ?
This is a recipe that I’ve been meaning to post for years now! Seeing as French toast is one of my all time favorite breakfast dishes, I figured that it was time I created a vegan version. I’ve tried a quite a few vegan French toast recipes that make things extra complicated with hard to find ingredients, so I really wanted to keep this recipe simple.
The hardest part about making French toast vegan is replacing the egg. In most baked goods, it’s easy to replace an egg with applesauce, banana or several other things. But that doesn’t quite work here.
Instead, we’re replacing the egg with a flax egg. It works to kind of stick to the outside of the bread and give that nice thick texture to the cooked toast.
Ingredients
Vegan French toast requires just a handful of simple ingredients. Here’s what you’ll need:
- Ground flaxseed. In our vegan French toast, this is the ingredient that mimics the egg that regular French toast uses to create the crustiness on the bread.
- Non dairy milk. Use whatever non dairy milk you like best. I really love soy milk or oat milk with this.
- Cinnamon + nutmeg. Warm spices that make this French toast taste incredible! For a more seasonal flavor, you can also sub these for pumpkin pie spice.
- Vanilla. For even more delicious flavor!
- Salt. Brings out the cinnamon and nutmeg flavors.
- Bread. I recommend using a thick-cut bread. Challah or brioche bread work great because they’re nice and fluffy but you’ll want to make sure to find vegan versions of them. More details on the best bread, below.
- Toppings. Don’t forget the fun toppings! The options are endless – fresh fruit, powdered sugar, vegan butter, maple syrup and/or almond butter are all yummy choices.
How to Make This Recipe
Vegan French toast is made just like regular French toast, but without the eggs. The milk is easily replaced with any preferred non dairy milk (I typically use almond milk because it’s always in my fridge) and for this particular recipe, we’re replacing the egg with a flax egg of sorts. French toast needs a bit of a binding agent that sticks to the outside of the bread and solidifies as it cooks (these are all very untechnical terms).
- Start this recipe by combining the milk and ground flaxseed together in a shallow bowl. Let this mixture sit and thicken for about 5 minutes.
- Next, add all other ingredients to the flaxseed mixture. No matter what I do, I find combining the cinnamon and nutmeg into the liquid rather difficult. If you whisk for a good few minutes, it’ll incorporate a decent bit. Then I usually add in a little more cinnamon midway through dipping the bread into the mixture.
- Spray a large skillet with cooking spray and heat over medium heat.
- Lightly dip the slices of bread in the milk mixture so that the bread is just covered on each side (NOT soaked).
- Cook the bread in the skillet for about 4 minutes on each side or until golden brown.
- Once done, top with syrup, fruit, and a dusting of powdered sugar and ENJOY!
Best Bread to use
The kind of bread you choose for this French toast recipe REALLY matters; even more than for the average French toast recipe. Do NOT use fresh, soft white bread for this recipe. You can make it work for traditional French toast that has egg in it, BUT it does not work well for this vegan French toast. You want slightly tougher bread that will hold up once dipped in the liquid.
Most often, I use stale sourdough bread for this recipe.
You’ll want a bread that is roughly the thickness and texture of potato bread or challah bread. You can also use softer bread that has gone a bit stale which is what I used here.
Tips
- When I make traditional French toast, I let the bread soak up a lot of the liquid. DO NOT do that with this vegan French toast recipe. For best results, lightly dip each side of the bread into the milk mixture, so that it is fully covered, but not completely soaked through.
- Leftover vegan French toast will keep fresh in the refrigerator for up to 4 days or in the freezer for up to 2 months. If you’re planning to keep your French toast in the refrigerator, you can store it in an airtight container or zip-top baggie. To store French toast in the freezer, wrap the slices individually in plastic wrap or separate the slices with parchment paper, then place all slices in a gallon size freezer bag.
- You can reheat French toast in the toaster oven. It cooks up wonderfully crunchy and golden brown. For French toast that has been frozen, you’ll want to add about 1-2 minutes more to the toasting time. It also works well to reheat French toast in a skillet or on a griddle.
Toppings
How do you like to dress up your French toast? I’m a big fan of a little fruit and lots of maple syrup. I start with a little bit and then add more as I see fit. So, in other words, I keep the syrup RIGHT next to my plate :) Some other topping options are:
- fresh berries such as blueberries or strawberries
- sliced almonds or chopped pecans
- a sprinkle of granola
- nut butter
- banana slices
- shredded coconut
- jam
- powdered sugar
- non dairy whipped cream
- vegan butter
I’m really excited for you to try this recipe! Please let me know how you like and what kind of bread you used. I’m always experimenting with different kinds of bread and how they affect the final outcome.
More vegan breakfast recipes to try:
- Coffee Cake Banana Muffin
- Perfect Green Smoothie
- Chocolate Baked Donuts
- Baked Vegan Donuts
- Vegan Muffins
- Loaded Breakfast Sweet Potatoes
- Vegan Cinnamon Rolls
- Vegan Hash
- Easy Tofu Scramble
- Vegan Pancakes
Vegan French Toast
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons ground flaxseed
- 1 cup non dairy milk
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Pinch salt
- 6 thickly cut slices of tougher bread**
- Cooking spray
Instructions
- In a large shallow dish, whisk together the ground flaxseed and milk. Let sit for 5 minutes so the flaxseed can thicken.2 tablespoons ground flaxseed, 1 cup non dairy milk
- Whisk milk mixture again before adding in the cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla extract, and salt. Whisk lightly until fully combined. In my experience, the cinnamon is hard to combine so I usually add a little extra in midway through dipping the bread.1 teaspoon cinnamon, ¼ teaspoon nutmeg, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, Pinch salt
- Over medium heat, spray a large skillet with cooking spray.Cooking spray
- Lightly dip the slices of bread in the milk mixture so that the bread is just covered on each side but not soaked. Do not let the bread sit in the milk mixture of any amount of time.6 thickly cut slices of tougher bread**
- Cook the bread in the skillet for ~4 minutes on each side or until a nice golden brown.
- Once done, top with syrup, fruit, and a dusting of powdered sugar and ENJOY!!
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
I was planning on making vegan GF brioche bread to use with a different French toast recipe when I found your on accident. Yours has the caramelization that I was looking for so I definitely want to try yours. Would that type of bread work with this recipe?
Thanks so much! My 13 yo son Hates eggs and this turned out just fine. He loves it!!! Yay!!! I used regular whole wheat, and took your advice to not let the bread sit in the mixture. This is awesome. Will def be doing this again. Thanks!!!!
aww yay! So glad that he liked it and it was a hit. We make this recipe a LOT in our house!
My local store has ground flaxseeds, but not flaxseed meal. Many websites say they are the same thing but one website says flaxseed meal is the remnants after flaxseeds are pressed for oil, while ground flaxseeds are ground whole flaxseeds. Do you know if either will work for this recipe? Thank you
I’ve used both but more often than not have been using GROUND flaxseed meal. I updated that in the recipe card
I was worried because my bread wasnt so stale, it wouldnt turn out good but it didnt mess up my pan or anything. And really delicious, thanks! :)
Recipe is not bad I would just add some type of sweetener to give the toast an extra sweetness internally but other than that it had the right amount of salt flavor and crisp from frying.
I just made a variation on this recipe (using what I had on hand) and it came out beautifully! I found that the real key to success for me was resisting my urge to flip early- it just peels the toasted edge off. Wonderful recipe, thank you!
First time making it, worked really well! We didn’t have thick bread just the regular slices of whole wheat bread and we had unsweetened soy milk on hand but it still turned out delicious! I’ve been missing French toast so much and it’s so wonderful to find an easy vegan recipe that’s just as fast to whip up as the egg version. Thank you for the recipe!
This was delicious! I have been trying to find a good vegan French toast recipe for months now and no luck of a good one. This one right here is amazing!!! This will become a weekly special for sure. Thank you for a great recipe.
YAY! So glad you liked it, Julie!! Thanks for coming back to let me know!
Delicious, not too sweet, fluffy! Yumm
hmmmm. I’m honestly not sure. I’m inclined to say that you could replace the apple sauce with about 3 eggs but I’m not 100% sure that would be the proper conversion
Does texas bread work as well for this recipe?
that would work well! You just want to make sure it’s a little stale and NOT super soft in the middle or else the bread just gets too soggy