Traditional Vegan Cast Iron Skillet Bread

This is probably the easiest bread you can make because it requires very little ingredients or finesse but tastes incredible and can be adjusted to meet various needs. I love to bake a plain loaf of bread and eat a variety of unique toasts for breakfast with nut butters, jams, avocado, you name it. It’s also the perfect sandwich bread and makes a mean vegan french toast or grilled cheese.

This truly is one of the easiest vegan bread recipes out there. I bake mine in a cast iron skillet, but you can bake it in a bread tin, a flat cookie sheet, or a dutch oven. My grandma used to have a bread making machine when I was a kid, and it truly did make perfect loaves. The hand me down one I’ve since acquired is a royal pain in the butt and the bread never turns out like my grandma’s, so I’ve gone the “artisan” route, which really just means lazy and delicious in this case .

I use a food processor with a dough blade to knead my dough, but of course you can use a standing mixer, bread machine, or knead it by hand. There appears to be no wrong way to make bread. It will always turn out carby and delicious, and if it’s not exactly what you were hoping for, cube it, toast it with spices, and make some scrumptious croutons out of that bad boy. Perfect excuse to bake another loaf tomorrow.

So for this bread, you’ll need the following ingredients:

3 cups flour

2 tsp instant rise yeast

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

1 1/2 cups water

Put the sugar, yeast, and warm water in the bowl where you’ll be mixing the dough. The sugar serves to feed the yeast so your dough can get nice and fluffy. After about 5 or so minutes, you can add in your other ingredients slowly and start mixing. If kneading by hand, do so for about 10-15 minutes. Great arm workout hehe. If you’re taking the easy way out like me, let your dough blade knead for about 5-7 minutes. Spritz a cast iron skillet with olive oil and gently place your dough ball in it. I usually let mine rise for about 60-75 minutes in a warmer area, like near a heater or on the stove top if the oven is on. You can also dust with flour, seeds, agave, etc if you’d like to add a fun twist at this point.

Once this is risen and doubled in size, throw your cast iron (or cookie sheet, bread tin, etc.) into a preheated oven and bake for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees. You’ll know it’s done when it’s golden brown. Nothing is better than fresh warm bread right out of the oven, so dive right in!