Pandesal are one of my favorite traditional Filipino foods, so developing a vegan pandesal recipe was super exciting to me! They are essentially just rolls topped with breadcrumbs that are typically eaten for breakfast. But when I think of pandesal, I think of super soft pieces of heaven! They have a wonderful subtle sweetness which makes them perfect to eat with butter, jam, or cheese. But they also taste great eaten by themselves!

This vegan pandesal recipe uses the tangzhong method that we also use in our sour cream and chive dinner rolls because it results in incredibly soft bread, and this recipes is no exception. These pandesal are incredibly soft, and they taste just like the pandesal you get from the little local bakeries in the Philippines.

For another delicious Filipino treat, head over to our vegan ensaymada recipe.

Make sure to check out the recipe notes for additional information and tips.

If you try this recipe, leave us a comment below to let us know how it goes. We would love to hear from you!

Vegan Pandesal (Filipino Rolls)

Little Lighthouse Baking Co.

Soft, sweet Filipino bread rolls with breadcrumb topping, typically eaten for breakfast.

5 from 1 vote

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Prep 35

Cook 25

Rest 2

Total 3

Course Breakfast, Side Dish

Cuisine Filipino, Vegan

Servings 15 rolls

Equipment

small saucepan
whisk
stand mixer
large bowl
plastic wrap
quarter sheet tray

Ingredients

Tangzhong

32 g bread flour (¼ cup)
75 g unsweetened soy milk (¼ cup + 1 tbsp)
75 g water (¼ cup + 1 tbsp)

Dough

1 ¼ tsp active dry yeast
407 g bread flour (3 ¼ cups)
60 g Just Egg (¼ cup)
80 g unsweetened soy milk (⅓ cup + 1 tbsp)
100 g sugar (½ cup)
35 g vegan butter (2 ½ tbsp) room temperature
1 tsp kosher salt
vegetable oil
¼ cup bread crumbs

Instructions

In a small saucepan, whisk together the tangzhong ingredients until no more dry flour remains. The mixture will be lumpy, but that's fine. Turn on heat to medium, and whisk constantly while cooking. Turn off the heat as soon as the mixture becomes a thick paste. This should only take a couple minutes. This is the tangzhong.
Into a stand mixer bowl with a dough hook attachment, add the soy milk, sugar, Just Egg, and yeast. Use a spatula or whisk to mix until well-combined.
Add the tangzhong, bread flour, butter, and kosher salt. Mix on low for 2 minutes or until ingredients are incorporated, scraping the sides and bottom as necessary. Increase speed to medium and mix until the dough is soft and supple (about 8-10 minutes), again scraping the sides and bottom as necessary.
Lightly oil a large bowl with about 1-2 tbsp of vegetable oil. Turn off the stand mixer. Form the dough into a ball, and transfer it to the oiled bowl. Use your hands to spread some oil across the entire surface of the dough.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled in size (about 1 hour).
Butter the baking tray. Pour bread crumbs into a small bowl.
Remove the plastic wrap (and set it aside so you can use it in a later step). Turn the dough out onto a clean work surface. Stretch or roll out the dough into a rectangle shape.
Cut the dough into 15 equal size pieces (5 x 3 grid) using a bench scraper, knife, or pizza cutter.
Grab one square of dough. Form it into a ball by pinching the corners of the dough together and rolling the dough in a quick circular motion on the surface using the palm of your hand.
Roll the dough ball in bread crumbs to coat the entire ball. Place the dough ball into your buttered pan.
Repeat the 2 steps above for all pieces of dough.
Loosely cover the pan with plastic wrap and let the dough rise until doubled in size (about 1 hour).
Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Remove the plastic wrap from the pan.
Bake in the center of the oven until the tops of the rolls are golden brown, about 20-25 minutes.

Notes

This recipe uses Just Egg to help achieve that impossibly soft texture. We don’t know of a suitable substitute at this time. If you try this recipe with a substitute for the Just Egg, please let us know!
We made our own breadcrumbs by ripping up some bread into pieces (we used some “reject” pandesal from the development of this vegan pandesal recipe) and baking the pieces on a tray at 300ºF until dry and hard. Then we placed the bread pieces in a plastic bag and work it with a rolling pin until we got very fine breadcrumbs. We store our breadcrumbs in the freezer so that we can always have fresh breadcrumbs for any recipe. This is what the dried bread pieces looked like.