Seitan – Home Production – A Well-Lit Path

What a great feeling, to tend to yourself. Each time you go closer to the earth, or closer to the source of the things that are needed, the sense of security and self-sufficiency grows. When we are safe, when we are fed well, we are not as susceptible to the kinds of negative whispering so prevalent on the Internet and cultivated in the news. Hope! And pass that hope on to others.

Years ago I was served a Chinese dish with “glutens”. These tasty little buttons probably came in a can, were certainly and liberally doused with MSG and, in a word, delicious. They were also meat-free, so that when I came to a point in my spiritual journey where other creatures were raised to the same level of importance as myself (or better, I was lowered to a level of importance more consistent with reality), I remembered that little dish, and did some research.

I found ample packets of “seitan” in the health food stores, at a price equivalent to meat. Yum! (Ouch!) How could this be? I wasn’t eating way up the food chain, or from a feed lot. I looked further, and with the Buddhists I found the origin, philosophy, and a recipe for making this high-protein, vegan ingredient, at home, with similar effort and the same pleasure as baking bread.

And here it is.

Dough preparation

4.5 c	stone ground whole wheat flour
1.5 c	unbleached white or bread flour, or semolina (higher gluten)
3 c	lukewarm water (90 – 100°F)

the dough
To 3 parts whole wheat flour (hard red organic Durham, preferably) add 1 part unbleached white (high-gluten bread) flour, to ease kneading. For a home batch which yields enough seitan for two main dishes or soups, use 6 cups total, or 4.5 and 1.5c each, respectively. Mix together with your hands.

Seitan dough should be pliable for easy kneading and washing; your target is a medium-grade bread dough. Use approximately 1 part water to every two parts flour, or 3 cups for a home batch. Mix the flour and water in a bowl until holding together, then dump out onto the counter, reserving bowl for soaking the dough. Knead for 10-15 minutes until springy. The more the dough is kneaded, the firmer the resulting seitan will be.

Return the dough to the bowl and cover with warm tap water; then cover the bowl with a towel or plastic wrap to preserve the heat, and set to rest for an hour or so. This step is essential for the gluten strands to “wed”; skipping it will result in a loose dough which is rather difficult to wash, and some of the valuable protein will invariably be lost to the drain.

washing
Knead the dough under water for several minutes until the water is quite milky-white. The objective is to release the starch from between the threads of gluten. To avoid fragmenting the dough, begin by using your fists and knuckles to massage it, without folding or tearing into it with your fingers. You will feel the stiffness imparted by the starch begin to loosen as the water clouds up.

Pour off this first “pressing” into a settling bowl, and collect the wheat starch for later use in soups or cooking. Add more water, maintaining twice the quantity of water as the dough mass, and repeat the kneading process, draining off the water when it gets too milky. These subsequent pressings do not yield much starch, and can be discarded. Be sure to allow the water to run off in a shallow sheet at the rim of the bowl, collecting any small pieces of gluten with its edge.

Continue kneading until the water is almost clear; you may have some brown from the wheat grains, but this is not starch, and needn’t be removed. The flour, now pure gluten, has a springy, stringy texture: as it loosens you will be able to find the last remaining knots of starch with your fingers, and can gently massage them into smoothness.

Give the gluten mass a last squeeze to remove excess water, and place it on a cutting board to rest. Wash and dry your bowl so it doesn’t “glue up”.

finishing
If you try to fry the gluten in its unfinished state, it becomes an inedible, rubbery or pasty mess. To be useful in recipes, the washed gluten must be finished using one of the methods outlined below. In the simplest form, it prepared as a whole, later to be sliced for use. Asian cooks will first shape the gluten in various forms using string or presses, or will roll and fold the gluten to give it a more meaty texture.

method 1
Let the seitan rest for 15-30 minutes while you clean your work area and prepare the finishing broth. Then ready your seitan for “finishing” (simmering in the broth) by cutting into the desired shape (sliced, cubed small or large), or leave it whole like a duck steak. Thinner pieces are said to result in softer seitan; Chinese-style glutens can be individually rolled into balls. Heat the stock (see below) and add the seitan, allowing it to simmer for 45 minutes to an hour. Longer simmering is said to result in softer seitan, though I haven’t seen evidence of much change with longer cooking.

Allow the stock and seitan to cool in the pot, then remove any added stock ingredients (ginger pieces, kombu), and pour seitan and stock into a Tupperware container for storage. Don’t forget your starch! (see below)

method 2
Place the rinsed seitan in an empty bowl and let it rest until the dough relaxes. After the dough has been rinsed for the last time in cold water, the gluten will have tightened and the dough will be tense, tough, and resistant to taking on any other shape. The seitan is then cooked in two steps.

In the first, the dough is put into a large pot with about 3 quarts of plain, boiling water. Boil the seitan for about 30-45 minutes, or until it floats to the surface. Drain the seitan and cut it into usable pieces (steaks, cutlets, 1-inch chunks, or whatever) or leave whole.

Next, move the seitan to the prepared tamari stock. Bring the stock and seitan to a boil, lower the temperature, and simmer for 1 1/2 to 2 hours (45 minutes if the seitan is cut into small pieces). This second step may also be done in a pressure cooker, in which case it would take between 30-45 minutes.

storage
Seitan keeps for a week in the refrigerator unpreserved. To keep it “indefinitely”, bring it to a boil in the tamari stock and simmer for 10 minutes, twice a week.

Traditional Seitan Broth

For a 6-cup home batch of seitan, bring the following ingredients to a boil, then add the seitan and simmer for 45 minutes to an hour. The stock may be reused within a few days, or may be used to package the seitan. Unless being used right away, any solids (ginger pieces and kombu, if used) should be strained off before pouring into a longer-term storage container.

4 c	water
1/4 c	tamari or shoyu
6	rounds of fresh ginger
6 “	piece of kombu (opt)
1/2 t	toasted sesame oil (opt)

WHEAT STARCH FROM SEITAN PRODUCTION

The first pressing of seitan production yields a fairly high-grade starch, similar in texture to other vegetable starches (arrowroot, corn). Once the water has cleared, and the starch has settled to the bottom of the bowl, slowly and carefully pour off as much of the water as possible. What remains will be a fairly dense liquid, ranging from soupy at the top to almost solid below.

If you have allowed to settle sufficiently, so that the solids are mostly isolated at the bottom, this should yield about 1 cup of semi-liquid starch. Pour into a cup or small container, cover, and refrigerate. For prolonged storage, pour into a shallow pan (a walled cookie sheet, for example) to dry; reduce the resulting solid to a powder by grinding, or break into pieces and dissolve when required.

PRODUCT INFORMATION

qty	ingredient	protein	cals	fat	chol	cost	notes

4½c	whole wheat flour	72g	1800	0g	0mg	$0.56	$2.00/5# ≅ 16c
1½c	unbleached or bread flour	24g	600	0g	0mg	0.17
3c	water	0g	0	0g	0mg	0.05	trace cost for filtering

4c	water	0g	0	0g	0mg	0.05	trace cost for filtering
¼c	tamari or shoyu	8g	60	0g	0mg	0.54	$5.39/20 oz; 2 oz
½t	ginger rounds	0g	?	0g	0mg	0.09	$2.99/#; ½ oz
6″	kombu (opt)	?	?	?	0mg	0.20	est.
½t	sesame oil (opt)	0g	60	7g	0mg	0.05	$5.69/10 oz; 0.17 oz

	cooking fuel and cleaning					0.25	est.
	total *	104g	2340	7g	0mg	$1.98	2 lb
	serving *	26g	585	2g	0mg	$0.50	8 oz

* total and servings assume that all protein, calories and fat from the sesame would be absorbed into the seitan during cooking or storage; actual totals will include only a partial contribution from this ingredient