Vegan Burger Buns

It's Friday as I write this, but regardless of what day of the week you read this post, Vegan Vednesday is right around the corner, never more than six days away. In addition to my mostly-vegetarianism, I observe veganism once a week in an effort to shrink my environmental footprint. The greenhouse gases generated by animal agriculture are culprits in climate change, as documented by indicators tracked by the EPA: bigger, earlier wildfires; more frequent heat waves; warmer seas; more common flooding; hotter air; and even an earlier ragweed pollen season (gesundheit).

If I don't plan ahead for Vegan Vednesday, I'll sometimes find myself absent-mindedly chewing a piece of cheese, say, and then I'll be disgusted with myself: HOW HARD can it possibly be to just NOT EAT ANIMAL PRODUCTS once a week, Jaylbyrd? So I try to plan ahead to avoid the self-loathing.

Cheese is an obvious violation of #VeganVednesday, but sometimes foods have unexpected dairy in them. I wanted to buy buns for the Impossible Burgers I cooked this week, for example, but all the buns had dairy ingredients: milk, eggs, butter. I reluctantly concluded I would have to bake my own. I turned to Jessica In The Kitchen.

I bake bread quite frequently, and it turns out that buns are no more challenging than any other bread. The actual time you spend working on any bread is small, but you do need to be on hand to do quick things to it (punch down the dough; shape the loaf/buns; turn on the oven; stick it in the oven) several times over a multi-hour period. Baking bread is a WFH-friendly activity.

Before baking

During baking, I was very psyched by how much they rose

One way to make the active time commitment even smaller is to use a food processor to mix and knead the bread, but last week I broke a part of my Breville machine, trying to clean it. I went to the Breville website and found the $7 part was out of stock. I tried to call customer service and was informed the wait time was 30 minutes, so I hung up. I tried the "chat" function on the website: singularly unhelpful. I then got an error message when I tried to submit a message using the website's online form. In desperation, I went to eBay and ordered the part from a supplier in Australia, and it's apparently going to arrive to me sometime in July, at a cost of around $20, including shipping. UGH.

Without my expensive and currently useless food processor, I made my buns the old-fashioned way with a spoon and a bowl. It did bring back fond memories of my early days of cooking and baking, guided by  the inimitable Bittman, of course.

The buns turned out perfectly lovely. I did some with sesame seeds, some not.

We had guests over for dinner on the patio, and I made a kid-friendly vegan menu: Impossible Burgers, vegan mac and cheese with broccoli, and fruit salad.

It can be hard to find uncooked Impossible Burgers, by the way. I got mine from Baldor Foods, and had to buy a box of 40, and they're still not cheap even when you buy them in bulk! But they come in sealed packs of 5 that fit nicely into my freezer. I'll be enjoying them all summer.

Two days after my irritating experience tracking down a food processor part, I actually got an email from Breville - despite the error message, apparently my webmail message did go through. They had the part available! Would I like to order it? I responded by taking them on the same boring journey you were forced to take with me five paragraphs ago (thanks for that, reader!). I concluded my response with "so no, thank you." They sent me another email, almost immediately, and while they were a little vague, I do believe they'll be sending me the part for free. I know you're on the edge of your seat, so I'll keep you posted.