B·Concept/Webinars

How to make egg free pastry

Last January, at our Pastry Innovation Center, Jordi together with Adrianna Jaworska held a free online masterclass on egg free pastry.

Due to the increasing demand for pastries suitable for people with different food allergies, we often receive questions about how to replace the egg in pastry recipes: What role does the egg play in pastry recipes? What is the nutritional composition of egg whites and egg yolks? What are the egg proteins and what do they do?...

While egg free pastry and vegan pastry can – in some cases – overlap, there is a subtle difference between the two. Egg free pastry, just like lactose or gluten free pastry, means that we are eliminating one specific ingredient or allergen (egg, in this case). This means that there might still be other ingredients of animal origin, like milk, cream or butter in egg free recipes.

Vegan pastry on the other hand, stands for pastry that is – by definition – not only egg free but free of all ingredients and their derivatives that are of animal origin free of all (like dairy products, but also gelatin, etc).

The need to eliminate the egg in pastry recipes can be due to various reasons. Some of them are:

  • Food allergies and intolerances are becoming more frequent, and eggs are one of the eight most important food allergens.
  • Customers who follow a vegan diet are looking for a sweet offer that does not include eggs among the ingredients.
  • Pastry chefs look for cleaner and more defined flavors (eggs, as well as dairy products, can distort the flavor of fruit or chocolate...).
  • Food cost: According to the European Comission, between 2021 and 2022 egg prices in Europe have soared by around 22 %...

What is the role of eggs in our recipes? During the masterclass, we talked about its role in different pastry preparations: cakes, cookies, creamies or mousses. 

Creamy
Mousse
Cake

In cakes and sponge cakes, the egg fulfills a double function: it acts both as a foaming and as a gelling agent. First, it helps us to introduce air into the cake batter and, later, it gels in the oven under the influence of high temperature. As a result, we obtain a baked, spongy texture. 

In creamies and creams, the egg yolk acts as an emulsifying agent - due to the lecithin present in the egg yolk. When we want to take out the egg yolks from a creamy recipe, we need to use another emulsifying agent, such as powdered, granulated or liquid lecithin (from sunflower seeds or soybeans).

In mousses, we no longer need to depend on egg whites or whipped cream in order to obtain well-aerated textures. We can use plant-based proteins, like soy protein or potato protein or powdered/liquid aquafaba instead. The only thing we need to keep in mind is that in a meringue the egg proteins are partially coagulated, which gives the egg white meringue more stability. 

At the end of the masterclass, we also shared two peanut butter cookie recipes: one egg free and another one vegan, both equally delicious! But that’s not all…we also showed you a recipe for an egg free 75 % dark chocolate mousse. 

With the molecular composition of ingredients learned in the first module of the online and extended B-Concept Pastry Course, understanding the interactions and bonding of molecules and mastering the possibilities they offer depending on how we organize and work with them will bring you one step closer to being able to formulate your own pastry recipes.

You can check out the full content of the webinar by clicking on the link below. The webinar is a part of a series of free masterclasses called B·Concept Pastry Answers in which we give answers to some of the common questions that pastry chefs ask themselves. Always from the B·Concept perspective.

New online pastry courses