Vegan Egg Wash Replacements

For vegan baking, finding an egg wash alternative that actually gives you that perfect glossy brown finish is tough. And if your bake is gluten-free, whatever wash you use might turn out entirely differently. We wanted to settle for ourselves what the best wash to use on gluten free baking was ourselves, so we tested every option.

Every. Single. One.

The Method

We brushed identical rolls with six popular vegan “egg” wash options:

• Vegan butter (we used Melt)
• Oil (we used olive oil)
• Maple syrup
• Soy milk
• Oat milk
• Aquafaba

Then, we tried a few combinations:

• Maple syrup + milk
• Maple syrup + oil
• Milk + oil
• Aquafaba + maple
• Aquafaba + milk

We topped them off with a sprinkle of chia seeds to test which options would hold a topping in place the best, but ultimately we found they all worked fine for that purpose.

The Results

The Best

These are the options we would recommend, and have used or will use in our bakery.

Maple + Oil

The combination of maple syrup and oil gave the perfect combination of browning and shine. This is our new first choice hands down.

Oil / Butter

No surprise here — oil and butter were by far the shiniest options. Although neither by themselves got the same level of browning as maple and oil together, they still looked pretty nice and toasty.

Maple Syrup / Maple + Milk

Both of these had essentially the same result. Nice browning, but much duller than maple with the added oil.

The Ok

These turned out fine — we’d say use them if you have a strong preference to, but wouldn’t suggest them.

Soy Milk

We didn’t expect there to be much of a difference between oat and soy milk, but boy was there! Soy milk turned out much darker — just as dark as the maple syrup! However, it was also very dull, which is what kept it out of our recommended category.

Milk + Oil

Unlike with maple syrup, oil didn’t do too much here. There was some light browning, and very slight shine if any.

Aquafaba + Maple

The only reason this is here is it was the only version with aquafaba that got any amount of browning. However it was still very light and very dull.

The Bad

In our trial, these were completely ineffective. We would not recommend them.

Oat Milk

It surprised us that oat milk turned out so much worse than soy! It was barely browned, and had absolutely no shine.

Aquafaba / Aquafaba + Milk

Aquafaba was definitely the most recommended option for us to try, so we were shocked that it was so ineffective. These didn’t look any better than the control option, with absolutely no browning or shine.