Anyone care to try it and report back?

"I took about 3 cups of vital wheat gluten, added a dash of salt, pepper, and nutritional yeast. Then I added a wonderful, restaurant quality beef bullion (with NO MSG) and a little bit of the restaurant quality onion seasoning—always void of MSG or hydrogenated oils (see www.fivestarpreparedness.com for these products) I mixed up the dry ingredients, then added about a cup and a half of water, mixed it by hand until I had formed a glutinous mass, and then baked it in the oven for 25 minutes at 350 degrees. I then put the wheat meat in the food processor to make it more resemble ground beef, and then used it in one of my favorite recipes in which "ground beef" is supposed to be the star of the dish."

HOW TO MAKE SEITAN

Using Vital gluten flour. I have made it with regular better for
bread flour, but it is a lot more work, even too much for me.....but
since they came out with the pure gluten flour I have been making
seitan pretty regularly. Everybody around here likes it a lot, even
more than tofu. Health food stores sell this flour, some upscale
supermarkets, and also stores that sell products in bulk.

It helps if you have made bread by hand before....

Take a big bowl (I use stainless steel). Put a bunch of gluten flour
on it. Put a little salt in it (1/2 tsp per cup of flour is what I
use) and mix well. Now get another person to pour water and very
quickly knead it like bread until all the gluten is moistened. You
have to work quickly, and the water pourer needs to be in synch with
you, more water, stop, more water, etc....

If you do not have another person to help, you can start with the
water and add gluten to it, this works too. Remember, knead it
quickly to get all gluten moistened. Your hands will get sticky and
messy, this is why a helper is nice....

If the dough has dark striations that is not so good, it means some of
the gluten did not get enough contact with water. This is why you
want to use enough water and knead. Keep kneading until all the water
is absorbed. Honestly, the first time you do it might not work 100%,
it does take a couple of trial and error sessions. If the gluten is
too tough you can always grind it up and use it as a ground up meat
substitute, so nothing is wasted. I did sausage (posted here) with a
batch that was too tough because it did not get enough water.

In any case, it should be a firm but not too hard dough. It will be
hard to knead, harder than bread.

So now you have a big lump of a dough and you are tired of kneading
it....Cut it up wiht a sharp knife into chunks the size you want, but
remember, they will double in size (at least double).

Prepare a veggie broth. Last one I used a big (turkey? roast?) oval
pan, black enamel with a cover that goes in the oven. I added:
water, bay leaves, peppercorn, celery stalks, hot peppers (optional of
course), shitake dried mushrooms, cilantro, powdered veggie broth,
chopped onion, garlic cloves sliced it two, taste and see if it needs
salt. Some people add ginger too, carrots can also go in.

Bake in broth (all the pieces should be covered) for about 3 hours at
350F. The gluten/seitan chunks should have grown and they are now
overflowing the pan. Just turn them around so they are moist.

Now it can be used in any recipe that calls for seitan. I freeze most
of it (squeeze some of the broth out if too wet), it does freeze very
well, no change in taste or texture.

Have fun with it!'

You can also do this stove top by the way, I do prefer baking but both will work.

One of my favorite things to do with this is make chimichurri from the garden herbs, marinate seitan in it and grill. They will work well marinated in many other things, and grilling is my favorite way to have seitan.

Adding gluten flour to regular flour will increase its capability to add more to the expandable gluten network, that you made when you knead your dough. Sometimes other (non-wheat) flours cause a problem with this (not enough gluten so they are lumpy and hard, dense) so you can just use other flours you might have (rye, oats, quinoa, rice, corn...) and add gluten for the network that will rise and puff up. Will not work on gluten free diets, of course.

I never use VWG in plain white flour loaves. The extra protein just isn't necessary.

But it is very helpful in heavier whole-grain loaves, especially with low-protein flours like rye and oatmeal. It's also helpful in loaves with lots of amendments that inhibit the rise like cheese, raisins, nuts, etc.

Carol

You might want to hang out on the Cooking Forum, there's lots of bread baking over there.

You can get it at Sam's pretty reasonable and bread flour to is a lot cheaper there

I bake all my own bread and so I go through yeast relatively quickly, I've never had any "die".

As for vital wheat gluten, it does have a place in my bread baking, but like Readinglady, I only use it for whole grain loaves as those flours sometimes benefit from the "help" of additional gluten.

Annie