How to Make Vital Wheat Gluten or Seitan

Recently on one of the whole food, plant based nutrition groups I follow on Facebook, there was a discussion about whether vital wheat gluten (also sometimes called seitan) is a "whole food."

A few people in the group didn't think it was.

Those people either did not do any research whatsoever or they have a very rigid definition of what a "whole food" is.

Seitan is technically a refined and processed product of ground whole wheat (flour) in that it is concentrated wheat protein with a lot of the starch removed. However, the refining and processing involved in making seitan is actually ridiculously simple. It involves making a rigid dough out of whole wheat flour (or bread flour, which has a higher gluten content) then soaking the dough in some more water to wash away the starch, which leaves chunks of gluten behind (SOURCE).

CLICK HERE to see how it's done.

Boom. Flour and water. That's all you need to make vital wheat gluten.

Now, is your homemade vital wheat gluten going to turn out like the exorbitantly overpriced seitan you buy in those tiny boxes at the store? Absolutely not. But the industrial process for making seitan is not any more complicated than that.

In my next post, I'll get into how to make tofu at home. Fun Fact: Tofu may even be a more refined and processed plant food than seitan, albeit only slightly.