Easy Vegan Croissants

Easy Vegan Croissants faster and without the usual butter block! You’ll still get beautiful flaky croissants but the process is way easier than the traditional method. Dairy-free and egg-free. No kneading required.

Why make these Easy Vegan Croissants

There’s nothing like the feeling of pulling out golden pastries of perfection from your own oven! Whether you’re making them for yourself, family or friends; the sense of accomplishment can’t be beat.

But with my easier method, you don’t need to plan 2 to 3 days ahead or deal with the mess of laminating butter squares that tend to leak out of the dough. You can make these and eat them the same day. Or freeze them before baking and have fresh vegan croissants whenever you want them.

This Easy Vegan Croissant recipe makes delicious pastries that are:

• free of all animal products so they’re
• dairy-free,
• egg-free,
• full of flaky layers that are
• crispy on the outside,
• tender on the inside

Back when I developed my original vegan croissant recipe, I stuck to the traditional way of making croissants as closely as possible to get the most authentic result (below). And readers loved the results too!

But too many people were turned off by the difficulty level and the long process. Honestly, sometimes, me too! So even though they are not the same, I make this easy version much more often.

How is this recipe easier?

Instead of the traditional lamination process, we’re going to grate a block of frozen vegan butter into the dry ingredients (flour, yeast, sugar and salt).

Then add ice-cold plant-based milk to create a rough dough.

 Instead of kneading anything, we’ll simply place the rough dough in the fridge and let it hydrate for an hour.

Afterwards, we will roll it out and do some folding. But it’s going to be way easier than the traditional lamination.

We’ll cut the dough to make 6 croissants. You can always cut narrower triangles to make mini’s as you like.

Whichever you choose, roll them up. 

Then drape with a damp cloth and let them rise. Place them in a warm, draft-free location. Just not too warm or the vegan butter will melt. 

Finally, no need to brush them with anything. Just pop them in the oven to reach their golden potential!

Take them to the Next Level

While a few hours is all it takes to make deliciously snackable vegan croissants, they can taste even better when you add time.

You can let the dough develop more flavor by simply leaving it in the fridge after mixing the ingredients together. The longer it rests, the more flavor develops from cold fermentation. Plus the gluten has more time to align and your final croissants can develop the signature honeycomb interior. 

The texture in this cross-section (below) was from a batch of dough I left in the fridge for 5 days!

Another way to switch things up is by adding your favorite fillings. I rolled up some vegan hot dogs and plant-based cheese in these.

I also tried both white and dark vegan chocolate for pain au chocolate. The dark held up better but the flavor of the white chocolate side was amazing.

Easy Vegan Croissant Ingredients

The ingredients for these Easy Vegan Croissants are the mainly same as traditional croissants: flour, instant yeast, sugar and salt. We just swap the dairy for plant-based alternatives. 

Flour

This recipe has been tested using Roger’s Bread Flour (13-14% protein) and No Name All-Purpose Unbleached Flour (13% protein). There was no noticeable difference so as long as the protein content is high enough, you can use either bread flour or all-purpose wheat flour.

This recipe is not been tested with gluten-free flour or other flours. Please let me know if you do!

Yeast

This recipe was developed with Instant Yeast. Instant Yeast is often labelled as Quick Rise Instant Yeast. Bread Machine Yeast will also work if that’s all you have. For more about Yeast, check out my article about the different kinds of yeast.

This recipe has not been tested with Traditional Dry Active Yeast. However if you want to try it, I recommend dissolving the yeast with the plant-based milk and  then adding the mixture last.

Sugar and Salt

These are for flavour. The amounts are not enough to make your croissants taste particularly sweet or salty; just a touch of each for the classic croissant flavor.

Plant-based Milk for Croissant Dough

Fortunately, plant-based milk is widely available and there are many to choose from. This recipe was tested using soy milk and almond milk but can use any plant-based milk you prefer.

Vegan Butter for Easy Vegan Croissant Dough

For the butter, you will want to find firm Vegan Butter that will hold its shape at room temperature. If it melts at your home’s room temperature, it won’t work very well. Vegan “butter” and margarine that comes in tubs is typically too soft for this purpose. If it spreads easily out of the fridge, it’s not going to work. Instead, get the type that is sold in sticks and put in the freezer immediately! It needs to be frozen solid before starting the recipe.

You can use (by best to worst):

1. Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Sticks –  They don’t melt too fast and have a buttery flavor that’ll make your croissants taste heavenly. Earth Balance also makes a Soy-Free version so look for that if you are baking for soy allergies. However, this brand is getting harder to find (especially in Canada) so lately, I’d been using the 2nd option for most of the recipe testing. 
2. Melt Organic Buttery Sticks – Like the name suggests, it does melt a little faster so things might get a tiny bit messier. However, I did test with it and it worked out alright. That said, the CEO Scott Fisher was pretty messy and rude in a DM convo with my fave vegan cheese queen, Miyoko Schinner. She had the screenshots, the community roared, and he came back with an apology. Definitely no judgement if this is the one you choose though. Admittedly it works pretty good.
3. Dairy Free Becel Plant Butter Unsalted Sticks. The flavor is more neutral which I don’t mind. However, they were all I could find for the final video shoot and they didn’t come out as nicely as the test batches to be quite honest. I think the water content is a bit too high. As you can see, I still haven’t published the video because I don’t think they are pretty enough. So I’m waiting for my preferred plant-based butters to come back on store shelves. Concerningly, they still haven’t after 4 months of waiting.

One I haven’t tried but has really good reviews for vegan pastry is Country Crock. Another is  Violife Plant Butter. Both, as well as Becel, are owned by Flora Food Group (formerly Upfield).

There are also recipes online for vegan butter sticks. However, I haven’t tried one in this recipe yet. Please let me know in the comments if you have a favorite vegan butter stick recipe!

Printable Recipe for Easy Vegan Croissants