Five of the loaves below are made without any flour at all, from soaked lentils, chickpeas, quinoa or whole seeds. All five are ours. If you have not baked one before, start with our guide to bread without flour: it explains why they work, which base to pick first, and every way they go wrong.
Bread is flour, water, salt and yeast. Everything past that is a choice, and we have said what each recipe chooses.
The order runs flourless first, then the plain loaves, then the flatbreads, then the enriched breads, and at the end the three sweet ones, which are closer to cake than to bread.
Eleven are ours. The rest are from bakers we read, and where one of those carries a lot of oil, sugar or butter we have said how much.
1. Vegan Lentil Bread
Ours, and the most read recipe on the site. Two cups of soaked red lentils, psyllium husk, baking soda, salt and vinegar. No flour and no yeast.
The lentils need soaking, so start the night before. Fifty-five minutes after that, and it slices like bread rather than crumbling.
2. Quick Vegan Lentil Bread Rolls
Also ours, and the fastest of the flourless ones. The same lentil and psyllium idea shaped into four rolls instead of a loaf.
Thirty-five minutes once the lentils have soaked. Rolls bake quicker than a loaf, which is the entire point of them.
3. Easy No-Yeast Quinoa Bread
Ours. Soaked quinoa blended with oats, baking powder, vinegar and salt. Six ingredients and no yeast to wait on.
Seventy minutes and it makes twelve slices. Good for anyone who has decided bread-making is too much of a production.
4. Gluten-Free Chickpea Bread
Ours as well. Six ingredients, one of which is water. A cup of dry chickpeas soaked overnight, blended with psyllium husk, and that is the loaf.
Nine slices at 108 calories. The psyllium is the whole structure here, so do not reduce it or swap it for ground flax.
5. Vegan Seed Bread
Ours too, and made entirely of whole seeds. Flax, sesame and pumpkin with psyllium husk and water, none of it ground into flour first.
Fifty-five minutes, twelve slices at 177 calories. It is dense and it wants slicing thin, which is how a seed loaf is supposed to eat.
6. No-Knead Artisan Bread
Four ingredients. Flour, salt, yeast, water. That is the whole recipe and it is the best plain loaf on this list.
The four hours are almost entirely the dough sitting there without you. Ten slices at 152 calories each, no fat added at any point.
Get the recipe from Vegan Huggs.
7. Quick No-Yeast Whole Wheat Bread
Ours, and the fastest bread on this page. Baking powder, baking soda and a tablespoon of vinegar do the lifting, so there is nothing to prove.
Forty minutes for a whole loaf. Two tablespoons each of ground flax, sesame and chia go in, which is what keeps it from turning out cakey.
8. Easy No-Knead Einkorn Bread
Another of ours. Five cups of whole grain einkorn, the oldest wheat still farmed, with sunflower seeds through it.
Eighty-five minutes and no kneading anywhere. Einkorn has weaker gluten than modern wheat, so the dough stays slack. Do not fight it or add flour to correct it.
9. Spinach and Onion Whole Grain Bread
Ours. Two onions and three handfuls of chopped spinach through a whole wheat dough, with sesame seeds on top.
Four and a half cups of whole wheat flour, so this is a proper loaf rather than a snack bread. Fifty minutes and ten servings.
10. Seeded Whole Wheat Sourdough
Sesame, poppy, chia and flax through a whole wheat sourdough, with a soaker so the seeds do not pull water out of the crumb.
Twenty-three hours start to finish, and you need a starter already going. Sixteen slices at 160 calories. This is a weekend, not an evening.
Get the recipe from Sourdough Brandon.
11. Gluten-Free Buckwheat Bread
Buckwheat flour with tahini, flaxseed and sunflower seeds. Seven ingredients and no wheat anywhere.
The fat comes from tahini and seeds rather than a bottle, which is the difference that matters. Seventy-five minutes.
Get the recipe from Vee Eat Cook Bake.
12. Chickpea Flatbread with Onions
Ours. Chickpea flour, water and green onions with cumin and garlic powder. No wheat, no yeast and nothing to prove.
Twenty-five minutes start to finish, and it cuts into four large pieces or eight small ones at 64 calories each.
13. Whole Wheat Potato Focaccia
Also ours, and the answer to the focaccia problem. A boiled potato worked into the dough gives the softness that focaccia normally buys with a great deal of olive oil.
Whole wheat flour throughout, topped with cherry tomatoes and fresh rosemary, eighty minutes for six servings. Compare the ingredient list with the focaccia below.
14. Easy Vegan Focaccia
Dimpled, topped with asparagus and red onion, and the crust is what people make focaccia for.
There are eight tablespoons of olive oil across the dough and the pan, and there is no honest way to make classic focaccia without them. This is the one to make when you want it, not the one to make weekly.
Get the recipe from Ooh La La It’s Vegan.
15. Whole Wheat Veggie Pizza
Ours. A whole wheat base with tomato paste thinned with water instead of a jarred sauce, and no cheese on it at all.
A hundred minutes, four servings. Nine vegetables go on top and the broccoli goes on already steamed, so nothing sits raw and undercooked in the middle.
16. Vegan Challah
Braided, glossy, and written without oil, which is unusual for an enriched bread. Flax eggs and maple syrup do the work that eggs and butter normally do.
Four and a half hours for two loaves. Most of that is proving, but the braiding takes a bit of nerve the first time.
Get the recipe from Zardy Plants.
17. Vegan Savory Babka
A whole head of garlic, coriander, herbs and tomato paste rolled through the dough and twisted, so the filling lands in every slice.
Eighty minutes and it makes two loaves. Three tablespoons of margarine in the dough, and it is a showpiece rather than a staple.
Get the recipe from Get Set Vegan.
18. Buttery Vegan Brioche
Soft, rich and pale gold, the way brioche is supposed to be, with vegan butter and plant milk doing the enriching.
Two-thirds of a cup of vegan butter goes in, which is what brioche is. Ten slices at 256 calories. Not a health food and not pretending to be.
Get the recipe from Rainbow Nourishments.
19. Vegan Cornbread
Cornmeal with plant milk soured by cider vinegar, which is the trick that gives cornbread its lift without buttermilk.
Thirty-five minutes and it cuts into sixteen squares at 121 calories each. There is melted vegan butter and half a cup of sugar in it, so it belongs next to chili rather than at breakfast.
Get the recipe from Steph Sunshine.
20. Sweet Potato Bread
Grated raw sweet potato with cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger, closer to a spiced tea loaf than to a sandwich bread.
Fifty-five minutes and no yeast, so it is the easiest thing here to make on a whim. The sweet potato does a lot of the sweetening, but the loaf still comes in around 1,760 calories.
Get the recipe from Plant-Based on a Budget.
21. Vegan Pumpkin Banana Bread
Pumpkin puree and banana with aquafaba standing in for eggs. Seventy minutes for one loaf.
Being straight about it: half a cup of canola oil and a cup and a half of sugar go in, and the loaf lands near 3,370 calories. That is a cake, and it is a good cake, but calling it bread is generous.
Get the recipe from Get Set Vegan.
Whole wheat flour is not quite the health food it is sold as
On the glycemic index, whole wheat bread and white bread land within a point or two of each other, both around 70. Intact wheat kernels sit near 45, and whole rye kernels lower still.
The fiber survives milling. The arrangement does not, and the arrangement was most of what made the grain slow. Two packets can both say whole grain and describe quite different foods.
None of which is an argument against baking. It is an argument about what goes in the pan. Cooked wheatberries or rye kernels stirred through the dough lower the glycemic index of the finished loaf and leave you fuller than the same bread without them. A longer, slower ferment and a denser crumb pull in the same direction.
Legumes behave differently, and that is the interesting part of this page. Blend rice into a slurry and its glycemic index climbs to meet a potato’s. Blend beans, lentils or chickpeas and nothing happens: whole, pureed and powdered all give the same low response, because legume cell walls are thick enough to survive the processing. That is why the five flourless loaves at the top hold their ground even though the legumes go through a blender. What blending does cost is the fiber that would otherwise have reached your gut bacteria intact. So the loaf is a good loaf, and a bowl of the same lentils is still a better bowl.
If you only ever bake one
Make the no-knead. Four ingredients, no kneading, no equipment, and it comes out better than most bought bread.
If wheat is the problem rather than the effort, start with our lentil bread instead. It behaves like bread, which is more than most gluten-free loaves manage.
And, always, seek health consciously.
