While Chris is away for work this week, I decided to indulge my doughy side and try to make my own seitan. I was inspired by a vegan friend, who had taken me to multiple vegetarian restaurants that served seitan as the “mock meat.” I realized after doing some research that seitan is actually something I ate quite often as a child growing up, yet I didn’t realize it had an English name. It was made in vegetarian stir-fries and eaten during periods when you weren’t supposed to have meat, as my grandma was a Buddhist. In Chinese, it’s called “kaofu.”

Store-bought seitan looked to be quite pricey, so I went to buy some vital wheat gluten flour and make my own. The process is actually pretty simple, and as usual, I found the kneading of the dough very therapeutic. However, this dough was remarkably different than bread dough, as the dough was squishier and even squeaked a lot from the air pockets as I kneaded.

The finished product looked pretty impressive, and I’m looking forward to cooking with it in a stir-fry tomorrow. 🙂