Vital Wheat Gluten

Vital wheat gluten — sometimes sold as pure gluten flour or gluten powder — is the protein of wheat, isolated and dried to a fine, pale-tan flour. It is made by washing a stiff wheat-flour dough under running water until the starch and bran rinse away and only the sticky, elastic gluten mass is left; that mass is then dried and milled to powder. The result is roughly 75 to 80 percent protein — glutenin and gliadin, the two proteins that knit into gluten — against the 9 to 14 percent of ordinary flour. Rehydrated, it snaps back to a springy, rubbery dough, which is why it is the base of seitan (wheat meat) and why bakers stir a spoonful into weak or wholegrain flour to strengthen it. On its own the dry powder is nearly flavourless, faintly cereal and beany, with a soft, floury feel — its value, like flour's, is structural rather than aromatic.