These vegan English muffins are soft, fluffy, and easy to make! Perfect for slathering with jam and vegan butter or stuffing with your favorite sandwich fillings.
My love for English muffins runs deep! A toasted English muffin covered in butter and strawberry jam was my favorite breakfast growing up.
It's pretty unfortunate that vegan English muffins are kind of scarce. Sorry to be a bearer of bad news: but lots of popular brands contain dairy products.
There are vegan brands out there (try Dave's Killer Bread, Ezekiel, and Trader Joe's muffins), but I know these aren't available everywhere. So I decided it was time to come up with a homemade vegan English muffin recipe. And guess what? They were WAY better than any store-bought English muffin I'd ever had (including both vegan and non-vegan ones).
Jump to:
What You'll Need
- Non-dairy milk. Just about any variety of unsweetened and unflavored non-dairy milk should work just fine. Try soy milk, almond milk or cashew milk.
- Active dry yeast.
- Sugar. Use organic sugar to keep the recipe vegan.
- Flour. The recipe calls for all-purpose wheat flour. Whole wheat flour, whole wheat pastry flour, bread flour, and spelt flour should all work fine as well.
- Salt.
- Vegan butter. This is normally sold near the regular butter at the supermarket. Look for brands like Earth Balance and Miyoko's.
- Cornmeal. Yellow or white cornmeal can be used. You could also substitute semolina flour.
How to Make Vegan English Muffins
Below is a detailed photo tutorial on how to make this dish. Scroll all the way down if you'd like to skip right to the recipe!
- Warm your milk up to 100°F to 110°F. Don't go much outside this zone — milk that's too hot will kill your yeast, and if it's too cool your dough will take longer than usual to rise. Whisk the sugar and yeast into the milk then set the mixture aside for a few minutes, until it becomes frothy.
- While the milk mixture sits, whisk your flour and salt together in a large bowl.
- Add your milk mixture to your dry ingredients, along with some melted (and cooled) vegan butter. Stir everything together to form a dough.
- Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead it for 5 to 8 minutes, until the surface is relatively smooth and the dough is elastic.
- Place the dough into a lightly oiled bowl and cover it with a damp tea towel. Let it rise for 1 to 2 hours, until it has about doubled in size. The amount of time it takes for the dough to rise will depend on the air temperature — warmer dough rises faster!
- Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface once again, and use a lightly floured rolling pin to roll it to about ½ inch thick.
- Use a large biscuit cutter to cut your dough into 3 ½ inch circles. Don't have a biscuit cutter? You can do it by hand using a round template (such as a small bowl or large drinking glass) and knife, but be careful not to overwork the dough!
- Place some cornmeal on a plate and dip each side of your dough rounds in it, then transfer them to a parchment paper-lined baking sheet.
- Cover the sheet with a damp towel and let the muffins rise until they become puffy, about 30 minutes.
- Lightly butter a large nonstick skillet or griddle and heat it up over medium heat. Once it's hot, add a few dough rounds (as many as you can fit without crowding) and cook the muffins until they're fluffy and lightly browned on the tops and bottoms. Your muffins will puff up and reduce a bit in diameter as they cook.
- Let your vegan English muffins cool for a few minutes on a cooling rack, then fork-split them by inserting a fork into the edges about halfway through the thickness of each muffin. Do this all the way around the muffins — this will allow you to easily pull them apart by hand when you're ready to toast and serve them!
Shelf-Life & Storage
Homemade vegan English muffins will keep in a sealed bag or container at room temperature for about 4 days or in the freezer for about 2 months.
Frequently Asked Questions
I'm not sure! I haven't done a lot of gluten-free yeast bread baking. I think your best bet would be to use an all-purpose gluten-free flour blend.
Split your muffins by hand, then toast them. You can eat them with your favorite spread, such as vegan butter, jam, or vegan Nutella. You could also stuff them with savory fillings and make vegan breakfast sandwiches.
You can, but they won't be as soft as the first batch. I prefer to make English muffin bread: loosely roll the dough into a loaf shape, dust it with cornmeal, and bake it in a 450°F oven until lightly browned and fluffy, usually about 25 minutes.
Absolutely! Just use the dough hook to mix and knead the dough.
More Vegan Yeast Breads
- Vegan Naan
- Vegan Dinner Rolls
- Olive Rosemary Focaccia
- Vegan Doughnuts
- Whole Wheat Pizza Dough
- Vegan Cinnamon Rolls
Like this recipe? If so, please stop back and leave me a review and rating below if you try it! Also be sure to follow me on Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram, or subscribe to my newsletter for more recipes like this one!
📖 Recipe
Homemade Vegan English Muffins
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsweetened and unflavored non-dairy milk, warmed to 100-110°F
- 2 teaspoons organic granulated sugar
- 1 (¼ ounce or 7 gram) packet active-dry yeast
- 3 ½ cups all-purpose flour, divided, plus more for dusting
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 tablespoons vegan butter, melted and cooled, plus more for oiling the bowl and skillet
- Cornmeal, for coating the muffins
Instructions
- Whisk the milk, sugar and yeast together in a small container or liquid measuring cup. Let the mixture sit for 5 to 10 minutes, until frothy.
- While the milk mixture sits, whisk 3 cups of flour (reserving the last ½ cup) and salt together in a large mixing bowl.
- Stir in the milk mixture and vegan butter. Continue mixing the ingredients until a soft dough forms, adding up to ½ cup of additional flour if needed.
- Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead it until smooth and elastic, 5 to 8 minutes.
- Place the dough into a lightly oiled bowl and cover it with a damp tea towel. Let the dough rise until doubled in size, 1 to 2 hours.
- Turn the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and use a rolling pin to roll it to about ½ inch thick.
- Cover a small plate with a thin layer of cornmeal and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Use a 3 ½ inch biscuit cutter to cut the dough into rounds. Dip both sides of each round in the cornmeal to lightly coat them, then place them on the baking sheet.
- Cover the rounds with a damp tea towel and let them rise again until puffy, about 30 minutes.
- Lightly butter the bottom of a large nonstick skillet or griddle and place it over medium heat.
- Give the pan a few minutes to heat up, then place a few dough rounds on the hot surface. Cook them for 5 to 7 minutes on each side, until lightly browned and puffy.
- Transfer the cooked muffins to a cooling rack to cool and repeat the cooking process until all of the dough rounds are cooked.
- Use a fork to split each muffin in half without separating the halves.
- When ready to serve, pull the muffin halves apart and toast them. Serve.
Would you like to save this?
We'll email this post to you, so you can come back to it later!
I love the taste of these but they came out way too dense and not airy at all :(. I only added the 3 cups and not the extra flour, not sure what went wrong! Going to try again with less flour. Wonder if these would be fluffier by making vegan “buttermilk” with the oat milk and a bit of vinegar?
Sorry they didn't work out for you! This actually sounds like they're underproofed to me. It could be that your yeast is old, the temperature is too low, or you just didn't let the dough rise long enough. I would check the date on your yeast, and try again, but make sure the dough as doubled during the first rise (take pictures with your phone), and they've gotten nice and puffy during the second rise. The time required can vary depending on temperature, so if it's cool, give them some extra time. Good luck!
I’m excited to try your recipe, I have all purpose flour but I also have a whole wheat bread flour that can be used as a 1:1 replacement for AP. Would bread flour be okay in this recipe or does it not have the correct properties as AP? (I know enough to know that flour has different amounts of protein, gluten, etc, but not which flours have what properties or which can be substituted)
Bread flour will work in this recipe! Bread flour has more gluten than all-purpose, so the muffins might come out a bit denser and crustier. That could be a good thing - it really depends on your personal preference.
Thank you for this recipe. I made it as directed and the english muffins were perfect!
Hi! How long do these keep?
They'll be good for about four days in an airtight container at room temperature, or for about two months in the freezer. Enjoy!
I'll never know how long they will stay because they will be gone in two days. So delicious.
Hi Alissa, Can the vegan butter be replaced with apple sauce? I do not use oil or vegan butter in recipes. Thanks.
Hi Angela! I'm really not sure how that would work in this recipe - I've mostly just used applesauce in sweet baked goods. I'm thinking it could work, but you'll probably want to cut down on the amount of granulated sugar by about half to prevent the muffins from coming out too sweet. I'd love to hear how it works out if you give it a try!
Is there a way to make them oil-free?
((Fingers crossed))
I think you could get away with subbing extra non-dairy milk for the butter, but I haven't tried this myself so no promises! You can cook them without butter, but you'll need to make sure you're using a really good nonstick surface. The dough will also stick to the bowl that you use for proofing, but this isn't a huge deal. Just scrape it out as gently as possible with your hands. You could also try lining the bowl with parchment paper. I hope all that helps! Good luck if you give it a try!
Huzzah! This recipe works exactly as pictured and described, and the muffins are so delicious. And yes: nooks and crannies! I am allergic to regular wheat flour, so I made these with Spelt flour; the result was the closest to "real" of anything I've ever baked using a wheat alternative. Thank you!
This is fantastic they taste absolutely amazing and it was easy, my only mistake was I had looked at the contents list of the recipe and saw that it was 3 1/2 cups of flour, so when I went to the mixing I didn’t read closely enough and put all 3 1/2 cups in instead of just the 3 cups and gradually adding more -up to a half a cup _if_necessary. So I had to add a bit more liquid. (I used cashew milk ) They look fantastic, taste even better than store bought, and this is a recipe you can just do the night before and in the morning you have these amazing fresh real English muffins!! love it thank you so so much
I'm so glad you enjoyed them! Thanks for letting me know how it went - I just added a parenthetical and bolded the addition of 3 cups of flour so hopefully nobody else misses it!
1/4 ounce of yeast = 7 grams (454 grams is 1 pound)
Thank you! Not sure how I did that! 🙃