This Gluten Free Vegan Zucchini Bread recipe is amazing! Super soft, filled with spices, and you can never taste the zucchini! Absolutely delicious vegan quick bread recipe that’s a hit with everyone!
So many people dislike zucchini bread. Why is that? It’s like they hear the name and immediately tell themselves they don’t like it. Before you do that, you have to give this gluten free vegan zucchini bread a try.
You will be shocked at how delightful it is! Plus for a bread, it’s one of the lowest in calories that we’ve made if that sort of thing is important to you.
This delicious and easy gluten free zucchini bread recipe is:
- dairy free
- egg free
- vegan
- can be Top 8 Allergen Free
It’s such a quick recipe to make that you will be amazed that you never made it before now.
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Why put zucchini in bread?
If you’ve never made zucchini bread before, you may be wondering who in their right mind would ever add zucchini, a vegetable, to a quick bread recipe that is supposed to be sweet. But just remember that it’s probably the same people that thought to add carrots to vegan carrot cake and that tastes amazing!
There’s actually a few reasons why one may add zucchini to their bread.
- Zucchini is mostly liquid so it adds a ton of moisture to your recipe without overpowering the bread like say the taste of bananas does to a vegan banana bread.
- You get to hid vegetables. Whether you have picky children or a picky significant other, sometimes you will do anything to get more vegetables in them. This dairy free zucchini bread helps aid in that!
- It gives you a way to use up extra zucchini from the garden. Zucchini is a vegetable that usually grows like crazy and people end up with way more the expected, so adding to bread helps use it up.
- People love believing they are eating something healthier. I wish I could tell you that this zucchini bread is actually “healthy”, but it still has sugar in it, so it’s not as good as say, eating roasted zucchini on it’s own
Okay, so maybe one of the first three reasons are better than the last, but you know the last reason for making dairy free zucchini bread is true too!
What ingredients do you need to make vegan zucchini bread?
You need a baker’s dozen (that’s 13) ingredients to make this simple vegan quick bread recipe. The ingredients that you will need are:
- Zucchini – This is the star of this particular dish. You just need one medium or small zucchini and not the 3-4 pound ones that you sometimes get when you grow them yourself. Unless you want to make lots of zucchini bread that is!
- Vegan sugar – Cane sugar is what we are using. If you want to learn more about why your sugar may not be vegan, you can learn more by clicking on the link. We also use maple syrup in the recipe for the perfect balance of sweetness and moistness.
- Non dairy milk – Using milk instead of water adds more flavor into the recipe. We have tried this with both oat and almond and there’s not much of a difference honestly. Use either unsweetened plain or unsweetened vanilla flavored milk, but you don’t want any sweetened milk in this already sweet recipe.
- Applesauce – This replaces the traditional eggs added but also helps the moisture in your cake.
- Oat and Almond Flour – this is the combination of flours that we found best for this recipe that we made
- Tapioca Starch – Starch is usually added to gluten free baked goods for binding but also tenderness and helping to give it structure that gluten usually provides
- Baking powder – this helps with rising again there’s an added amount than most gluten baking since there’s no gluten in this recipe we add additional baking powder to help
- Salt – helps the flavor profile develop and stand out
- Ground cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves – these spices are added for warming, flavor, and a distinct taste that makes this such an amazing recipe
Substitutions and variations:
- Vegan sugar – You can sub this with coconut sugar or date sugar
- Applesauce – non-dairy yogurt or another puree like pumpkin, sweet potato or banana could be used
- Oat and Almond Flour – we haven’t tested but you could use a gluten free 1:1 flour blend (same amount as listed)
- Tapioca Starch – potato starch, arrowroot powder or cornstarch could also be used instead
- Optional ingredients: walnuts – chocolate chips, cranberries, raisins – feel free to add any of these traditional add-ins to quick breads for this recipe as well!
Frequently Asked Questions:
In the United States, the Top 8 Allergen are: eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, milk, soy, wheat (gluten), shellfish, and fish. The allergen ingredients list that we use for this vegan zucchini bread would include the butter, nuts, and flour.
Nuts – You can omit the optional nuts with no additional changes to the recipe.
For the almond flour, we haven’t tried it with only oat flour, but we think it would likely work.
Your bread will be too moist and not cook all the way through. It’s very important that you drain as much excess water off the zucchini as you possibly can.
While if gluten based bread recipes, you have to worry about overmixing due to the development of additional gluten strains which we don’t want. However, you don’t have gluten in a gluten free bread recipe. Still, you can add too much air into the batter or over process and break down other ingredients, so it’s still a good rule of them to only mix until combined.
Yes! Once made and cooled, it will last for a week stored in an air tight container at room temperature.
Or you can follow the freezer instructions below.
You can absolutely freeze this dairy free gluten free zucchini bread recipe. We would recommend that you let it cool upon coming out of the oven, then slice the bread into desired size slices.
Afterwards, you can place a small piece of parchment of wax paper between each piece and freeze the loaf.
The reason we recommended freezing the vegan bread recipe in slices is because it will make it easier to thaw by being less time consuming.
You can remove slices as needed and either place on counter to thaw or place in microwave to thaw more quickly.
Of course, you can freeze this vegan bread loaf in one whole loaf, but it will take longer to thaw. If doing it this way, remove and set on counter until it comes to room temperature and the middle is no longer frozen.
What are other dairy free breakfast ideas that are great for on the go?
This gluten free vegan zucchini bread is great for on the go morning. Once you make it, you can grab a slice or two and head out the door. Here’s a few other vegan (dairy + egg free) breakfast ideas that are great on the go:
- Vegan Blueberry Fruit Tarts
- Vegan Coffee Cake
- Dairy Free Banana Bread
- Vegan Blueberry Muffins
- Vegan Banana Pancakes
- Glazed Vegan Donuts
- Vegan Chocolate Donuts
- Perfect Vegan Cinnamon Rolls
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Gluten Free Vegan Zucchini Bread
Ingredients
- 1 cup zucchini, water squeezed out (measured after draining)
- ¾ cup non-dairy milk
- ¾ cup unsweetened applesauce
- ½ cup vegan cane sugar
- ¼ cup maple syrup
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 ¼ cups fine oat flour
- 1 ½ cup almond flour
- ¼ cup tapioca starch
- 3 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon cloves
Optional Add-ins
- ¾ cup walnuts, chopped (Optional)
- 1 ½ cups dried cranberries or raisins or chocolate chips, pick one
- turbinado sugar, optional for topping
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9×5 loaf pan with parchment paper and grease pan.
- Grate zucchini over towel. Squeeze out excess water making sure it's as dry as you can.
- In a medium bowl, add zucchini, non-dairy milk, unsweetened applesauce, sugar, maple syrup, and vanilla. Stir together and set aside.
- In a large bowl, add both flours, starch, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg and cloves. Whisk together.
- Add your wet Ingredients to the dry Including and stir together with a spatula just until combined.
- If adding, walnuts, or any optional ingredients, add now. Fold to combine. Do not over mix.
- Pour batter into greased loaf pan. Top with turbinado sugar if desired.
- Bake for 70 to 80 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean. Check for doneness at 60 minutes. Add foil to cover at halfway to prevent burning the top.
- Remove from the oven and let cool for 10-15 minutes.
- Remove from the pan and transfer to cool completely.
- Slice in 16 equal sized pieces (or desired size) after cooled.
- Store in an air tight container.
Sam
What can I replace with oat flour?
LarishaBernard
gluten free flour
Blaire
This is so delicious! Like best tasting zucchini bread ever and the texture is nice and moist. I subbed the applesauce with cashew coconut yogurt. It is a little crumbly when slicing it, maybe because of this substitution. If I did it again I think I’d try the applesauce as written or add a little flax for stability.
Larisha Bernard
Any chance you cut it immediately instead of waiting until it cools completely? Sometimes that makes it crumbly
Barbara Jean Parland
Already thinking about making this again. I’m thinking some chocolate chips next time. Good recipe as always!
LarishaBernard
Yum! That sounds amazing!