The Baking Biker Chic

If you’ve looked at the seitan sausage recipe, you’ll realise that there’s a lot of the same base ingredients in this recipe. And that’s what I love about using gram flour or gluten as a base or even beans. With just a few tweaks you can create very different recipes.

There’s lots of recipes on the internet for vegan bacon and I’ve taken my inspiration from lots of trials and experiments. I made my son some for lunch today, he had it with beans and toast and was very impressed. He’s very fussy about food but likes a lot of my vegan creations.

If the thought of eating meat substitutes doesn’t work for you – you’ll not like this. There is one commercial streaky vegan bacon, which I know of, but for me it was lacking flavour. In fact all the fake bacons I’ve had seem to lack flavour – this doesn’t.

Remember that gluten can be tricky to work with and will stick to everything so work quickly and soak the bowls and utensils immediately in hot soapy water.

Mix 1 – dry ingredients

• 1 cup gluten
• 1/4 cup gram flour
• 3 tbsp. nutritional yeast
• 3 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp mace
• 1 tsp onion powder

Mix 1 – wet ingredients

• 3 tbsp. maple
• 2 tbsp. pureed sundried tomatoes
• 1 tsp liquid smoke or vegan Worcester sauce
• 2/3 cup water

Make mix 1 by blending all the dry ingredients first then add the wet ingredients, divide into three and set aside until you make the next mix.

Mix 2 – dry ingredients

• 1/2 cup of gluten
• 2 tbsp. gram flour
• 2 tbsp. nutritional yeast
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder

Mix 1 – wet ingredients

• 1 tbsp. of cider vinegar and then water to make up to 1/2 cup of liquid

As you did with mix 1, blend the dry ingredients then add the wet ingredients mixing thorough. Divide the mixture into three.

Method

• Pre-heat your oven to 160 degrees centigrade
• To make your streaky bacon, you need to create layers
• On a non-stick liner roll mix one into three rectangles – make sure you kneed the mixture well so that it’s as sooth as you can get and roll thinly
• Do the same for mix 2 – might be a bit harder to get this to work, but it’s the ‘streak’ so doesn’t have to be so accurate
• Neaten up the mixture so that when you come to cut it later it’s neat and tidy and there’s little wastage
• Place in the oven for 15 minutes then take out, turn over and bake for a further 15 minutes
• You do not want to over cook this – again it’s something, which you’ll prepare for future use – freezing or refrigerating (I’ve kept this in the fridge for up to a week in a sealed container)
• Once cooled, using a very sharp knife, slice thinly

To cook the streaky seitan bacon, simply spray a pan with Fry light (or the spray coconut oil available in Tescos is amazing) and carefully ‘fry’ both sides until crispy. This is a perfect part of my Scottish breakfast items – I’ll be pulling these all together in one place very soon.