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Vegan Gluten free Zucchini Bread Recipe. Moist, soft Zucchini Bread loaded with Oats, Chia seeds, Zucchini. Vegan Gluten-free gum-free Soy-free Recipe. Pin this post.
Gluten-free baking can be tricky and even more so when vegan. There is no egg to support the baked structure. So the onus of holding the structure falls on the starches gums, flax/chia/psyllium and other ingredients. GF baking also might not work well by changing a non gf recipe with a 1 on 1 substitution. Most often you will want to use a combination of flours and starches and also evaluate the recipe. Cupcakes and muffins are easier to substitute when using a premixed all purpose gluten-free blend, but with larger loafs, the loaf will fall or not cook through the center or end up gummy or overly crumbly and dry depending on the ingredients used. It takes many trials and lessons along the way to get to a good gluten-free baked quick bread.
For this gluten free Zucchini bread I use almond flour, whole oats and chia seeds to add that bulk and volume that will hold the bread structure. There are no gums in this bread. You can use 1/2 tsp xanthan for more rise of the loaf. This loaf is full of zucchini, is moist and makes an amazing breakfast bread. Serve warmed with vegan butter or Glaze with your favorite glaze.
The chia and zucchini are soaked for some time to allow the chia seeds to absorb some of the liquid and the zucchini to leak as much liquid as it can. This helps make the chia seeds less crunchy and the batter more predictable. Make this with any other shredded veggie or fruit. If you make it, tag me and let me know how it turned out!
More gluten-free baked options from the blog
- Pumpkin Banana Cranberry Bread – GF
- GF Almond Butter Blondies
- Banana Walnut Loaf – GF
- Coconut Flour Brownies GF
- Lentil Sandwich Bread – GF Yeast-free
Soak the zucchini, chia and sugar mixture for an hour. Add flours and oats and mix in. the batter should be a thick batter. Drop into parchment lined pan. Even it out using a spatula. Top with chopped nuts or seeds if you like.
Bake until a toothpick from the center comes out almost clean.
Cool for 15 mins in the pan, then on the cooling rack. Brush vegan butter on top to soften the crust.
I usually refrigerate the bread for a few minutes before slicing for cleaner slices.
Vegan Gluten free Zucchini Bread Recipe
Ingredients
Wet:
- 1 large zucchini grated - about 1.25 cups
- 1/2 cup raw or other sugar, I usually use 1/3 cup for a less sweet breakfast loaf
- 1/4 cup water
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1.5 tbsp chia seeds
- 2 tbsp oil
- 1/2 tsp vinegar, apple cider or white
- 3 tbsp maple syrup
Dry:
- 3/4 cup old fashioned oats, use certified gluten-free if needed
- 1/2 cup almond flour
- 1/2 cup oat flour, use certified gluten-free if needed
- 1/4 cup white rice flour
- 1/4 cup potato starch
- 2 tbsp tapioca starch
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon, optional
Instructions
- Grate the zucchini and add to a large bowl. Add the rest of the wet ingredients and mix well until the sugar dissolves in. Chill the mixture for half an hour.
- Fold in the oats into the bowl and chill for another 10 minutes. Preheat the oven to 365 degrees F / 180ºc. Line a 8.5 by 4.5 inch loaf pan with parchment or grease it well.
- In a bowl, whisk the rest of the dry ingredients really well. Add it to the wet bowl and fold in well. The batter should be thick. if the batter is too flowy, add in a tbsp or so more rice flour.
- Drop this thick mixture into parchment lined pan. Even it out using a spatula. Top with chopped nuts or seeds or a crumb at this point.
- Bake for 50 to 55 minutes or until a toothpick from the center comes out almost clean.
- Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then remove from the pan and cool completely. Brush oil or melted vegan butter on top to keep the crust soft. Slice and serve warm with vegan butter. I usually refrigerate the loaf for 10-15 mins before slicing.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Thanks for the lovely recipe Richa. I’ve made it as is, just increased the rice flour to 1/2 cup and added cranberries for a bit of colour. I top it with fresh grated zucchini and the bread looks (and tastes) soo yum.
Awesome!
Hi Richa, could i possibly use quick oats instead of old fashioned oats.
Thanks a lot for your awesome recipes.
Looking forward to making this bread.
yes they should work
Hi! The almond and oats flour have to be store bought or I can make these at home and use?
you can make them at home. For oat flour, blend oats in a blender in 1 minute cycles until finely ground. For almond flour, put raw almonds in a blender a tbsp of flour or starch. Pulse a few times to break into smaller pieces, then blend in 1 minute cycle, then let the blender cool for 5 mins and blend again.
Hi Richa,
Can I leave out the vinegar? If not what can I add instead?
Thank you for sharing your recipies.
lemon juice.
Hi Richa
What can I use in place of almond flour? We are gluten and nut free here due to allergies.
no almonds would be tricky in this loaf. Try it with pumpkin seed or sunflower seed meal, but bake it into muffins. Bake 2-3 muffins to check if they bake well and the texture and flavor works for you, so that you can adjust the batter before baking the rest of the batch. Bake for 30 to 35 mins. (add some cocoa for chocolatey bread, add more vanilla or zest etc for flavor).
Hey Richa
I am trying to turn gluten free & vegan to improve on my health. Here, in India, it is difficult to find most of the gluten free vegan grocery. Also, have been losing heart due to lack of recipes. Chanced upon your blog and realised that I could do a lot with the help of your recipes. I have an excellent oven to bake in.
In cereals I have a choice of Millets’ flour, Cornflour, Amaranth flour, Buckwheat flour, and Water-Chestnut flour. Do you think these can be used for baking breads?
Hi Aseema,
Yes you can use those to bake gf vegan recipes. There are some gf recipes on the blog you can try. You can substitute the oat flour or sorghum flour in the recipes with millet, amaranth or water chestnut flour and keep the rest the same if possible. I often use tapioca and potato starch. You can use a combination or cornstarch and arrowroot starch.
Wonderful! I will definitely try your suggestions. Muffins will be just fine 🙂
Could I substitute flax seeds for chia seeds? I’d like to try this asap as my tastebuds are longing for this recipe!
yes. make a coarse meal out of the flax seeds and use them
Thanks so much – I absolutely adore your recipes! I have a lot of sensitivities and find your recipes such a joy to work with and usually if one ingredients is not doable for me, there is an easy substitute. And thanks for getting back to me so quickly 🙂 I tried with grated carrot first since I’ve had so many disasters with zucchini but the batter was waaaaaay too dry as zuke is quite a bit more wet. How much liquid would you add to the carrot version? I added too much I think as the bread was a mass of goo and therefore had to be thrown out. With the cost of almonds so high I don’t want to make too many more mistakes 🙂 I then tried the zucchini version (the initial version) and the bread barely rose (not like in the photo above) so I was wondering if you could help me understand what I did wrong as I followed the recipe exactly but used flax seeds ground instead of chia seeds. Thanks so much!
GF vegan baking is a tough one. I usually have 3 out of 5 success rate and have to salvage 1 or 2 from weird states. 🙂 For the gummy ones, I usually slice them thin and dehydrate at low heat in the oven to make crisp biscotti type stuff for anything that I know tastes decent and I don’t want to waste it.
Here are a few rules I follow while baking gf.
1. The consistency is key for gf baking. whenever I make a change(or even if its the same recipe, it can behave differently), i add about 3/4 of the dry into the wet and note the consistency. I add more a little at a time to make the mix.
2. too dry batter will bake to a dryer baked result. too wet a batter will most likely fall after rising and be gooey. I prefer keeping the batter on the dryer side when I am not sure. As I can always add a moist glaze later if the baked result is dry.
3. If the mixture is too dense/dry and you want to add some more liquid, direct liquid will not work. it just doesnt incorporate well when added later. You want to add 1 or 2 flax egg or a chia egg instead.
4. Depending on the mood of everything, gf baked goods generally rise much less than regular baking. As long as the texture is ok, you did good. Did the zucchini bread have a good texture?
Hi Richa Thanks so much for your reply – I missed it as for some reason nothing is reaching my inbox – but that’s ok…I remembered this am to check your site.
Encouraging statistics! Then my 4 out of 5 failures isn’t too bad 🙂 Great idea about dehydrating! I threw out the carrot – now that I’ve read your 4 rules I know that adding water in instead of the flax egg is what went wrong there. I haven’t done enough gf baking to know what texture is the “right” texture…and I know that only comes with trial and error 🙂
Re the zuke bread …I’m dehydrating some of it though threw out most before I read this 🙁 ..yes the texture was good it just was a gooey mess so …looking at your 4 rules ….the batter was too wet. Though I think working with zuke is a challenge since it’s hard to know how wet is too wet and how dry is too dry (that is squeeze out too much water).
If the dehydrator works for salvaging some of my “errors” than I’ll keep trying as when I get one that works…I’m ecstatic. When I used wheat and eggs in my earlier life, I pretty much had success all the time…this gf baking has a real learning curve 🙂
🙂 yes, vegan baking with wheat is also almost always 5 out of 5. its gf vegan that is quite tricky. I don’t squeeze the zucchini. The 1 hour time for the chia seeds to hydrate should make a gel-ish kind of mixture of the wet. Also, if it is gooey from the middle, but has baked some close to the edges, then bake longer. the pan and oven matter, so sometimes its just about baking another 10-15 minutes.
Another thing you can do is to bake it into muffins. Bake 2 muffins and see how they turn out. if they rise well, are not gooey etc. Then you can adjust the batter before the next batch. Baking a loaf is much more difficult to get right compared to baking muffins.