Home Made Gluten

Last week I had a visit with one of my nieces.  She shared parts of a book she is currently reading by Michael Pollan, "Cooked".

Photo from Michael Pollan's website:

This link tells some about the book. I can't wait to read it though I will need to wait for winter when things slow down.

http://michaelpollan.com/books/cooked

In this book it is suggested to make home made gluten.  So we did that when I was with her and in just two days it was ready to use (I thing the warm summer days made this happen quickly).  We started out by using it in homemade waffles and my sister who is adversely affected by what she thought was intolerance to grain found out it might just be the type of glutens we have been using aka. baking powder (also yeast);  because she did not experience knee pain after eating the waffles this time.  So the jury is still out about this but we will be awaiting further experience.

The recipe for home made gluten in the book is in metric and it was a little beyond me to figure that out at the time; so using my cell phone I did a search as quick as possible which really wasn't very fast.  Now I'm going from memory which is probably inaccurate, but I'm going to tell you what I did today based on how much white flour was left in the jar.

3/4 cup strong alkaline water (refer to the blog post dated 4-30-14)
1/4 cup white flour
1/3 cup fresh ground whole wheat flour.

Let sit with a thin cotton towel over it, stirring once a day plus adding the same ingredients each day. As soon as it is bubbly (in one to three days) throw away 2/3 of it and feed it again with this same mixture as noted above.  Stir each day and let sit on the counter under a towel.  Once you have the starter where you want it...as in it smells sweet and is bubbly, you can refridgerate it for up 5 days.  Feed it to keep it living.

If it doesn't work I'll have to order the book or call my niece to get a refresher.

Here are a couple photos of what it looks like on the first day:

 

Watch this blog for further updates and how to  keep the gluten alive and well.  If it smells like vinegar start over.