Seitan at Home

Ingredients:
Gluten
7 cups Whole Wheat Bread Flour
7 cups unbleached white flour
7 cups cold water

Stock:
7 cups water
1/2 cup-1 cup shoyu (If you want to make it less salty, use less shoyu.)
3 1/4 inch slices ginger
3 cloves garlic
1 bay leaf
1 piece kombu (sea kelp you can get at any Japanese market)


combine flours in large bowl
pour in water gradually, stirring well to form a sticky dough. Add only enough water until dough is a kneadable consistency.
punch dough with fists several HUNDRED times, kneading well to thoroughly and evenly develop the gluten (abt. 15 mins)
cover dough with cold water and keep submerged for 30 minutes

transfer dough to colander and place in sink
under cold running water, carefully knead dough to rinse out starch. water will become milky.
after several minutes of cold water rinsing, alternated between tepid and cold water rinses until water runs clear and dough has a firm rubbery texture. it will lose about 2/3's of its size.

in a 6 qt. pot, combine stock ingredients and bring to a boil.
form pieces of gluten into billiard sized balls, drop into liquid one at a time.

cover and simmer. (given the heat of your stove, it might be best to do plan on a minimum of three hours.)

remove from broth.

After it has cooled, you have seitan! You can refrigerate it in it's broth or freeze it!