How to make gluten from flour ?
Avital
After some search on the web and in the usenet groups, I found that
there is a way to make gluten out of all purpose flour or whole wheat
flour.
( I can't find gluten in the health food stores )
Does anyone have the instructions for this ?
thank you,
Avital
MrFalafel
Posted this last week:
I finally managed to make some pretty good wheat gluten in the UK! It
appears I was using the wrong flour all of this time. The trick? Only
use 'Strong White Flour'.
Here's how it went:
10:25am return home from safeway with a 1.5kg bag of 'strong white
flour' (subtitled 'breadmaking flour') and box of Kallo Vegetarian
stock cubes.
10:30am dumped bag of flour into a bowl and poured in most of a pint of
water. Stuck my hands in and started mixing. It was very gooey and
sticky to start but I kept mixing and kneading until I got a dough in
about 5 minutes.
10:35am dough seemed a bit dry so I added a bit more water and worked
it into the dough. Started kneading in earnest. I would push the dough
down with my weight through my hands using a 'CPR' type action. Then I
would fold the dough over and repeat. Sometimes I would push my fists
down into the dough to try to flatten it. Then I would fold it over and
push down again. This was very gruelling but I did not stop constantly
kneading. My arms were aching and I was sweating. MrsFalafel made some
comments about me being a 'soft office guy' which I shrugged off. 25
minutes of solid kneading and punching. The dough now springs back when
punched.
11am. Finally stopped kneading! I formed the dough into a smooth ball
with no cracks (easier said than done). It was about the size of a
human head. I placed the ball into a big bowl and filled it with water
enough to cover it. I let this sit for an hour.
12pm. OK, back to gluten creation. Under the water, I start kneading
again. But this time, with kind of 'squeezing a sponge' motion as well.
I was kneading, squeezing and holding the ball together at the same
time. I kept changing the water and kneading/squeezing for another half
an hour until the water became clear. It's important to keep up the
rinsing/kneading until the water runs clear, as you want that starch
out of the gluten. Finally, after 30 minutes of labour, I had a ball of
gluten about the size of a human brain. I showed it to MrsFalafel and
she said 'ewww!'. I chase her around with it and say 'who's the soft
office guy now, huh?'. I wonder how many people have been threatened
with gluten before. Are there any seitan related crimes?
12:30pm. I put a pint or two of water in a big saucepan on the stove to
boil. Added three stock cubes. I then started slicing the gluten up
into bite size chunks. Be sure to toss the chunks right into the
boiling stock as you cut them as they have a tendency to stick together
in the open air. Once the gluten is cut up and placed in the stock,
give 'em a stir and let the pan reach a boil. Keep an eye on it as the
gluten bites will suddenly swell up and the pan may boil over (like it
did with me). When this happens (after only a couple of minutes) turn
off the heat, leave the gluten in the stock and go to the pub for a few
hours.
4pm. Returned from the pub. The gluten is looking very good and it's
soaked up quite a bit of flavour. I put the gluten in a plastic box
along with some of the stock and put on the lid and place it in the
fridge. It can now be added as is to stir-frys, stews, soups or rolled
in cornflour and fried, or rolled in a sticky marinade and baked and
more.
This gluten turned out to be not has 'hard' as the stuff in gluten
restaurants but it's a lot like the 'gluten puff' stuff I've had in San
Francisco. Nice and chewy and holds flavour well.
I hope your gluten experiences are just as successful
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Dick Margulis
If you are looking for gluten to use as a meat analog in vegetarian
cooking, MrFalafel's instructions sound like just the ticket.
If, on the other hand, you want to use it in baking, you need to branch
off from his procedure after you get to the point of running around the
kitchen chasing your wife ;-)
The next steps are drying and grinding. I don't have any specific
experience or procedure for you, so further research may be needed, but
I imagine the drying involves chopping the mass into fairly fine pieces
(maybe a meat grinder would be helpful) and spreading it out in a warm,
dry place--like a drying oven if you have one. When it is thoroughly
dry, pulverize in a blender or mill.
HTH,
Dick
Avital
as well as some exercise for the arms :-)
I guess I will have to get strong flour or buy the gluten from somewhere.
thank you,
Avital
Avital
I decided to try harder on getting gluten from a store, before trying that process.
But thank you for the instructions :-)
Avital
Dick Margulis <marg...@fiam.net> wrote in message news:<3CC12FC3...@fiam.net>...
Lois Taitague
in powder form, and can be bought at most co-ops either in bulk or in
a box under the name of Vital Wheat Gluten. My co-op sells it for
$2.58 a box for 12 ounces, or in bulk for $2.50 a pound. It seems as
though it would be must too involved to make the gluten powder from
regular flour at home, just to add to another flour to make bread.
I might be mistaken, but I believe it is called seitan only after the
gluten powder is made into a protein substance by the method
previously described.
On Sat, 20 Apr 2002 14:04:44 GMT, Pat Meadows <p...@meadows.pair.com>
wrote:
>On 19 Apr 2002 21:53:43 -0700, avi...@hotmail.com (Avital)
>wrote:
>If you Google on 'seitan' you'll be able to find directions.
>
>Here's one site with directions:
>
>http://www.vrg.org/recipes/vjseitan.htm
>
>There are also mixes for seitan sold in natural food stores.
>Arrowhead Mills makes one.
>
>Pat
MrFalafel
>On 20 Apr 2002 06:33:32 -0700, avi...@hotmail.com (Avital)
>wrote:
>
>>I guess I should have made it clear. The intended use is bread making.
>>
>>I decided to try harder on getting gluten from a store, before trying that
> process.
>>But thank you for the instructions :-)
>>
>
>http://www.kingarthurflour.com , specifically
>
>http://ww2.kingarthurflour.com/cgibin/htmlos/05283.5.1740307810918210570
>
>or put 'gluten' in the search box of the online catalog.
>
>It's $3.95/pound. A pound is quite a bit and will last
>quite a long time.
>
>If you bake bread, maybe you'd be interested in having their
>catalog anyway - lots of neat stuff for bread bakers.
>
>Pat
Hey people: These people ship to the UK/Europe and around the world. You too
can have Vital Wheat Gluten powder in your own home by simply calling them.
I'm gonna have me a gluten frenzy in week or two...
Thanks for that link!! Maybe now I can get that vegan Louisian Hot Link recipe
finalized...
fitwell
wrote:
>On 19 Apr 2002 21:53:43 -0700, avi...@hotmail.com (Avital)
>wrote:
>
iirc, it's just a process where you "wash" flour until you get rid of
the starchy, powdery part of it and the elastic goo you're left with
is gluten.
I used to make it years and years ago (about 20 now), but of course,
don't have recipe anymore for it. I do remember it takes a lot of
flour for every bit of gluten you get.
I'm sure a google search would bring up something eventually.
Good luck!
Ross Clement
: Hi everyone,
I have done this once. I am never going to do it again.
The method is to take flour, and mix in enough water to make a stiff
dough. Knead it a bit until it's a sticky ball.
Then, you place it in a big bowl of water, and squeeze it underwater
with your hands, being careful to keep it in a ball. The water will cloud
with starch, which you get rid of by pouring out the water. You then refill
with water, and continue squeezing. Or,you can use a continuous flow/
overflow of water. You continue this for a length of time that I suspect
will put you off the whole procedure too, until the water runs clear. You
then have a ball of gluten much smaller than your original dough ball.
This is then cooked by boiling in stock until you have seitan.
Cheers,
Ross-c
Dave J
Baking last January. They had us do one with Whole wheat flour (some hard
red, spring, etc.), Soft white, Patent, Clear, Rye, Durum, and others.
Talk about tired arms! I also had a blast watching the Rye people attempt
to get some gluten.
Some of the Rye testers thought they had gluten, but the instructor/Dr
showed us that it was mostly gums (pentosans, etc.). That there was some
gluten present, but that it would be very difficult and time consuming to
wash it out by hand succesfully.
I was surprised to find a substantial amount of gluten in the Durum flour.
The average golfball sized test produced about a chewing gum sized piece of
gluten (more or less). Each sample gluten wad produced different
elasticity/extensibility characteristics. Some were more like old chewing
gum whereas others were more like rubber bands.
Finally, we put all of the gluten wads on little metal plates and baked them
off.
The better the wash, the more the wads blew into large bubbles. When a
profile cut was made of the baked gluten bubbles, we saw that remaining
starches were accumulated as whitish sediment in the bottom air pockets of
the bubbles and as a fine light coat on the surface of the bubbles.
Interesting huh?
Dave J in CA
...with bigger biceps now due to all of the washing...
Alexandra
"fitwell" <NoS...@NoJunkMail.com> wrote in message
news:3cc63234...@usenet.magma.ca...
Hi! I've made it a few times to make seitan cutlets.
It's a bit messy, but easy to do.
I recommend washing the dough in the sink under running
water.
Here's a link to a recipe:
http://www.vegweb.com/exchange/messages/78525.shtml