Vegan biscuits with miso and rosemary

This week’s recipe is one for vegan biscuits. These vegan biscuits are irresistibly crunchy on the outside, flaky and soft on the inside and full of flavour thanks to umami rich miso paste and fragrant fresh rosemary. I am totally in love with these vegan biscuits and I hope you will be too!

Both myself and Duncan got struck down with Covid last week and so we lived on supermarket soups day after day after day. Things did get so unbearably boring. Then I saw this America’s Test Kitchen video on making the flakiest biscuits ever and they looked so good, I got really jealous. Suddenly all I wanted was a flaky biscuit or two with my soup, not some boring sourdough.

I’ve never made biscuits like that before but I knew that their dough is similar to scones except usually way richer so I figured I will give it a go. What I wanted is a savoury, cheesy biscuit so that I can enjoy it with my bowl of soup, but you can make these sweet also. I used miso paste to season these golden squares and to give them umami, an almost cheese-like flavour. And it worked a treat…well after some tweaking!

The amount of miso needed some calibration as my first batch was so salty it was barely edible. Two batches later, I struck the goldilocks amount and we loved having these ‘buttery’, flakey and crunchy vegan biscuits on hand, which is just as well as well as I made piles of them.

If you want to make these sweet rather than savoury, simply skip miso and rosemary and add half teaspoon of salt and about a couple tablespoons of sugar instead. I hope you’ll give these a crack.

MORE ABOUT THE INGREDIENTS

VEGAN BUTTER: Vegan butter is an essential ingredient to making vegan biscuits as their texture relies on incorporating fat that stays solid at cold temperature. In fact, the key to making good biscuits is keeping everything as cold as possible and for that reason I have used grated butter that I froze before using. I recommend using a good quality vegan butter for these. My favourite is a Danish brand Naturli. It comes in a block and a tub – you want the block for this application, not the tub – and it’s available in large supermarkets – I regularly see it in Sainsbury’s and Waitrose.

FLOUR: I made these using plain all purpose white flour and that’s what I recommend although feel free to experiment with coarser gluten containing flours like spelt or wholemeal flour. Do bear in mind that different flours absorb different amount of liquid so you will need to adjust the amount of liquid.

PLANT MILK: Instead of traditionally used buttermilk, I used high quality soy milk with some acid – I used rice vinegar but lemon juice or other neutral vinegar works well too.

BAKING AGENTS: I used both baking powder and baking soda to make these vegan biscuits rise beautifully. I used 2.5 tsp of baking powder and just quarter of a teaspoon of baking soda. Baking soda comes into a chemical reaction with acid (in our case rice vinegar mixed into the soy milk) and gives these vegan biscuits an extra lift.

ROSEMARY: Aside from miso, I added some fresh rosemary to these vegan biscuits to give them another flavour dimension. Initially, I started with a tablespoon of chopped rosemary but I found that amount too overpowering so settled on one and a half teaspoon. You don’t have to use rosemary, thyme leaves would also work well or you can skip that addition altogether.

MISO: I added a liberal amount of white miso paste to this dough to give these vegan biscuits savoury cheese-like flavour and to season them at the same time. Miso is already very salty so I did not use salt in this recipe at all. If miso is not up your street, skip it and use salt – less than a 1 tsp – instead or make them sweet by using at least 2 tbsp of sugar and half a teaspoon of salt for balance.

HOW TO MAKE IT?

1) GRATE BUTTER THEN FREEZE

The most important thing to get right when making biscuits is to keep everything very cold. For that reason, I grated cold (not frozen) butter on a box grater (large holes) and froze the grated butter until ready to use. You can also grate frozen butter – dipping it in flour before grating helps to grip it well – but I found that process too slow and laborious. Mix soy milk with rice vinegar, miso, maple syrup and rosemary and placed it in the fridge to chill.

2) DUST BUTTER IN FLOUR

I sifted flour and both baking powder and baking soda into a medium sized bowl, mixed well then added frozen butter which I simply coated in the flour using my hands.

3) ADD LIQUID

Next, I add liquids. In order not to overwhelm the flour with too much moisture all at once, I pour the miso-flavoured soy milk in slowly while mixing the liquid in with a knife. Once you’ve used all of the flavoured soy milk, you will likely need another 2-3 tablespoons as the amount needed depends on the absorbency of your flour. Add the milk in slowly tablespoon by tablespoon and stop when the dough comes together just roughly. It’s normal to have some dry flour patches and some wet patches – this will even out nicely in the next stages of making these vegan biscuits.

4) DO A SERIES OF ROUGH FOLDS

Using a bench scraper and your hands gently fashion the dough into a rectangle, shorter edge facing you. The rectangle should be longer than mine, ideally but it doesn’t matter that much.

Then use a bench scraper to lift a portion of the dough up and fold both sides onto the middle, like a letter. If you are having trouble folding you could also cut the dough into three even portions and stack them on top of each other. After each portion of folding, use a lightly floured rolling pin and gentle, even pressure to roll the dough into a rectangle again and roll it out again. The point here is to build up as many layers of dough as possible before the butter starts melting. Ideally, do the folding 5 times.

5) SHAPE AND CUT INTO SQUARES

By the time you’ve folded the dough five times, it should be much more consistent and evenly hydrated compared to what it looked and felt like when you first started. Form the dough in a square that’s about 2 cm / ¾ inch thick, cut off the sides with a sharp knife (don’t bin them though) and then cut the square of dough into nine even squares.

Arrange the biscuits (and the offcuts on a smaller tray) on a baking tray and in the fridge to chill while your oven comes to temperature (205° C / 400° F). Leave about 2.5 cm / 1 inch of space around each square. Just before the biscuits are ready to go into the oven, glaze them with a mixture of soy milk and oil.

6) BAKE UNTIL GOLDEN

113 g / ½ cup vegan butter, cold or frozen
40 g / 2 tbsp + 2 tsp white miso paste
120 ml / ½ cup cold soy milk, plus 2-3 tbsp extra
10 ml / 2 tsp rice vinegar (or lemon juice)
10 ml / 2 tsp maple syrup
1½ tsp chopped rosemary
250 g / 2 cups plain white flour
12 g / 3 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda

GLAZE

10 ml / 2 tsp oil (I use light olive oil)
10 ml / 2 tsp soy milk

METHOD

Grate fridge-cold butter coarsely, place in a baking paper lined box and freeze. You can also grate it from frozen, but I personally found it too frustrating – it was taking forever.
Whisk miso paste into ½ cup (120 ml) soy milk until completely dissolved. Add rice vinegar and maple syrup, place in the fridge. Have some more cold soy milk on hand as you are likely to need a little more.
Sift flour, baking powder and baking soda into a medium size baking bowl.
Take frozen butter out and gently prise bigger pieces apart with your hands if they stuck together, then add the butter to the flour bowl, gently coat it in flour using your hands.
Add rosemary to the soy milk. Add flavoured soy milk to the flour little by little, while stirring gently with a knife. Once you’ve added all of the miso flavoured milk, you will probably need 2-3 more tablespoons of cold milk, add them one by one until the dough very roughly (!) comes together – don’t worry if there are some wet and some dry patches, it will even out in the next stage.
Transfer this mess of a dough onto a floured countertop. Using a bench scraper and your hands, fashion it in a rough rectangle with the shorter edge facing you then using the scraper fold that rectangle into three like an official letter so that you have 3 layers of dough on top of each other (see photos). Gently roll it out into a rectangle again using a floured rolling pin and do the same again. Ideally, do the folding five times to build enough layer in the dough.
Finally fashion the dough into a 2 cm / ¾ inch tall square, cut off the edges (don’t bin them) using a very sharp knife or your bench scraper and divide the dough into 9 squares. Cut in one sharp motion as dull edges inhibit rising.
Arrange the biscuits on a paper lined baking tray, about 2.5 cm / 1 inch apart from each other and chill for 30 minutes while you heat up the oven to 205° C / 400° F. Chill the offcuts on a smaller tray.
Make the glaze by mixing soy milk with olive oil and glaze chilled biscuits just before they go into the oven.
Bake the biscuits for about 18 minutes, start checking after 15 – they brown quite a lot due to a large amount of miso in the dough. You may also want to rotate the tray after 10 minutes or so. Bake the offcuts on a separate tray for about 10 minutes.
Cool the biscuits down to settle and to finish cooking on the inside, enjoy straight away or warm up on the hot oven the following day – although they are the nicest when freshly made.