Vital wheat gluten

Gluten de blé vital

What it is

Chinese Buddhist cooks were washing the starch out of dough to leave the gluten behind - mianjin - a thousand years before the powder existed; the word seitan was coined in 1961 by the macrobiotic teacher George Ohsawa. Dry, it is a protein concentrate at around 75 percent, not a flour.

In the kitchen

Add 1 to 2 percent of the flour weight to lift a weak flour, and hydrate it in the water first, because it swells faster than flour and lumps the moment it meets a wet dough. Past 4 percent the crumb turns rubbery and dry and the loaf tastes of nothing.

Goes with

T65 bread flour Rye flour Soy sauce Ginger Garlic Kombu Toasted sesame oil Chinese five-spice

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