How to make smoked and cured seitan bacon from bread flour.
This recipe isn’t for the faint of heart- it’s for the bacon lover who wants the most delicious version of vegan bacon.
This recipe has you wash the flour, season the gluten, create a delicious bacon broth, then you cure the cooked seitan, smoke it, slice it, and then pan fry it!
This method will create the most delicious bacon that is packed with flavor while having that lovely chewy meaty texture with ribbons of fat.

The vast majority of the recipes for seitan bacon online use vital wheat gluten instead of using bread flour. While this is a shortcut, you sacrifice flavor and it’s harder to digest. There aren’t other vegan seitan bacon recipes that have you cure your bacon or use a smoker. The curing and smoking not only helps improve the flavor, but the drying effect of smoking helps make the texture of the bacon perfect.
This recipe is created for the vegetarian bacon lover. This isn’t some ‘bacon flavored’ marinade. This recipe uses traditional methods to create bacon, only the base of ingredient is seitan instead of pork.
What is Seitan Bacon?
Seitan bacon is mainly made from wheat gluten, or wheat protein. This recipe has you make two types of dough from bread flour- then you wash away the starch. One of the doughs you mix in oil and seasonings to create a ‘fat’ layer that marbles throughout.
Once the meaty seitan is simmered in a bacon flavored broth, it’s cured with salt and sugar, then smoked just like traditional bacon.
This recipe starts out with you making a seitan, then it becomes a real bacon once it’s cured and smoked in the traditional way!
This isn’t a seitan that is flavored like bacon, it’s a seitan that is transformed into bacon through traditional curing and smoking methods.
What to Expect- The Timeline
This recipe takes time and most of it is hands off. The smokey, chewy, peppery, and sweet bacon is worth it!
- Day 1: Mix flour and water together to form the initial dough. Let it soak in salt water overnight
- Day 2: Wash the starch away from the gluten, season the seitan, and shape it. Let it simmer in a homemade vegetarian bacon broth for 24 hours.
- Day 3: Coat your cooked seitan in the cure
- Day 4: Flip the seitan
- Day 5: Flip the seitan
- Day 6: Flip the seitan
- Day 7: Flip the seitan
- Day 8: Place seitan in smoker for 5 hours, wrap it up, let cool overnight
- Day 9: Slice the seitan bacon and pan fry it
How to Make the Perfect Seitan Bacon
I included a full length Youtube video going over details on how to have the most success with this recipe. This is a more advanced recipe for someone who has made washed flour seitan beforehand.
With the help of the video, any beginner can thrive with this recipe!
Here are a few takeaways from that video that will help you succeed.
- Use a bread flour and not all purpose flour. (All purpose flour is too low in protein)
- Use a lot of salt when initially soaking the dough ball in water overnight. This helps strengthen the gluten making it easier to remove the starch and increase your yield.
- Tightly wrap your seitan in a cheesecloth when you simmer it. This helps improve the texture and prevents it from becoming too soft.
- Use a slow cooker on the lowest setting or an instant pot on slow cook at the lowest setting. If you made your vegetarian bacon broth right before you assembled the seitan, let it cool off before adding the seitan to the broth. Too high of a temperature will cause the seitan to expand, become soft, create air bubbles, which will result in a spongy bacon.
- Slow cook your seitan for at least 20 hours, a full 24 hours is recommended. While you want a low temperature to prevent it from expanding, if it is not cooked enough, you will have a doughy textured bacon. You can slow cook your bacon up to 72 hours in the vegetarian bacon broth.
- The salt from curing your seitan bacon will release juice. Ensure you are using a container that allows air flow while being able to hold in the juices that will release.
- Remember to rinse the cure off your bacon before you smoke it! It will be too salty if you skip this step.
Looking for More Seitan Recipes?
- This Roasted Seitan Turkey has a crispy skin, a moist, yet meaty center. This is the perfect seitan for your thanksgiving dinner!
- Gyro night got better with this vegan beef seitan! This beefy seitan is similar to a chuck roast, only it’s made from bread flour.
- For a classic vegan chicken look no further than the classic Flour Washed Seitan! This is my go seitan recipe as it is so versatile and delicious. This chicken flavored seitan shreds just like chicken and is very high in protein.
- Similar to the classic chicken flavored flour washed seitan, these flour washed seitan chicken wings are super delicious. This recipe has you shape your seitan into smaller wings before you simmer then, then bake them in BBQ sauce.

Smoked Seitan Bacon
Equipment
- Meat Slicer Optional
Ingredients
Bacon Broth
- 1 Large Onion
- 4 Cloves Garlic
- ¼ Cup Coconut Oil
- 1 Cup Dried Shiitake Mushrooms
- ⅓ Cup Brown Sugar Coconut sugar, or Jaggery works here too
- 2 tbs Smoked Dulse
- 8 Cups Aquafaba From any bean or water*
- 1 tbs Vegetarian Ham Seasoning
- 2 tbs Mushroom Seasoning
Seitan Bacon
- 5 lbs Bread Flour
- ¼ Cup Red Rice Yeast Powder
- ¼ Cup Salt
Seitan Bacon Binder
- 2 tbs Coconut Oil or vegan butter
- 1 tbs Nutritional Yeast Flakes
- 1 tsp Garlic Powder
- 1 tsp Onion Powder
- 1 tsp MSG
- 1 tsp Vegetarian Ham Seasoning
Cure
- ¼ Cup Salt
- ¼ Cup Brown Sugar Can use maple sugar, coconut sugar, palm sugar, jaggery, or sweetener of choice
- 3 tbs Ground Black Pepper
- 1 tsp Curing Salt Optional, ground and dried Koji rice also works here
Instructions
Forming the Dough
- In one large bowl, combine 4lbs of bread flour to ¼ Cup of Red Rice Yeast Powder. Knead in 6 cups of water to form a dough
- In another smaller bowl add 1lbs of bread flour to a bowl with about 1 cup of water, knead into a dough
- Stretch and fold the dough every 30-45 minutes for about 4 hours (this helps build up the gluten for a higher yield and easier time washing out the starch, you can skip this step if you are short on time. You can do this as long or as short as you would like, do try to knead the dough in some degree to help build up the gluten)
- In a blender add ¼ cup salt to 7 cups of water, blend until dissolved.Pour the water over the dough balls and place them in a cool place overnight. Place a plate over the dough to prevent them from floating.(You can leave them out at room temperature overnight, but you will have the best results if you refrigerate as cold helps strengthen the gluten and prevents possible fermentation)
Washing the Flour
- Start with the larger pink doughGently knead the dough in the salted water until the water is thick and cloudy. Pour away the water and refill your bowl with more fresh water. Continue to gently knead the dough until the water is thick and cloudy again. At this point you can pour away the cloudy water into another large bowl to collect the 'starch water' or you can pour it down the drain. Continue to knead the dough under the water until no more starch leaves the dough. The dough should be pink and webby looking at this point.
- With the second smaller batch of dough knead it in the salted water until it is thick and cloudy like before. Continue to gently knead the dough until the water is thick and cloudy again. At this point you can pour away the cloudy water into another large bowl to collect the 'starch water' or you can pour it down the drain. When the dough starts to get webby and is 'mostly washed' (starch is still coming out of it, but the texture is mainly webby and has most of the starch removed) set aside.
Vegan Bacon Broth
- Chop 1 large onion, crush and mince roughly 4 cloves of garlic
- Either heat up a large stock pot (if using the stove) or set your Instant Pot to Sautee (recommended) Add about ¼ cup of coconut oil to your pan along with the chopped onion, garlic, and dried mushrooms. Sautee for about 5 minutes then add in the ⅓ cup brown sugar and the 2 tbs smoked dulse. Cook for 2 minutes then pour in your 8 cups worth of water/aquafaba and 1 tsp of mushroom and vegetarian ham seasoning. Stir well. If cooked in a stock pot on the stove, pour the broth into a slow cooker and set the temperature to low. If cooked in a Instant Pot, change the setting to slow cook Low.
Assembling the Bacon Seitan
- Add 2 tbs coconut oil, 1 tbs Nutrional yeast flakes, 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp onion powder, 1 tsp veg ham seasoning, and 1 tsp of MSG to the smaller bowl of white dough that is partially washed. Knead the seasonings in and set aside
- Take half of your pink dough and stretch it out into a rectangle on a flat, clean surface. Spread out the white dough over the pink dough to create a thin layer. Take the other half of the pink dough and layer it over the white dough. Take one edge of the dough and roll it into a cylinder, then fold the dough in half. Wrap the dough in a low grade cheesecloth (with small, fine holes, like a stock stock)
- Add the wrapped dough into your prepared broth (ensure the broth has cooled to the lower temperature set to the slow cooker or instant pot)Let slow cook for 24 hour, flipping it over every few hours to ensure even cooking.
Curing the Seitan Bacon
- Remove the seitan from the broth and let cool.Unwrap the seitan from the cheesecloth. Grind your black pepper to make 3 tbs worth (use a mortar and pestle or a coffee grinder)Mix together the ground black pepper with ¼ cup salt, ¼ brown sugar, and 1 tsp curing salt (or ground koji)Gently coat your seitan in the mixture, trying to be as even as possible. Place your seitan in a dish that can accumulate liquid that still allows some air flow (a casserole dish works well here)
- Place your seitan in a refrigerator for 5 days, flipping it every day and spooning on the liquid that accumulates from it
- After 5 days of flipping your seitan and recoating it in the cure, rinse it off. Sprinkle on 1 tsp of ground black pepper mixed with 1 tsp of brown sugar and evenly coat. Let it sit in the fridge one more day, the exterior of the seitan should be tacky and dry.
Smoking Seitan
- Heat up your smoker according to the manufacture instructions and use your choice of wood chips, apple wood chips are great for this
- Place your seitan in your smoker and smoke for 4-6 hours, depending on how smoky you like it- flipping it over halfway through
- Let your seitan fully cool and wrap it up tightly in waxed parchment paper and let it rest overnight.Slice your seitan bacon to the thickness you prefer, and pan fry each slice with some coconut oil (unlike traditional bacon, this is low fat, so you need to fry it in some oil!) The bacon is good in the fridge for up to 2 ½ weeks, and indefinitely in the freezer
Video
Fry your bacon in a little oil and toast your bread. Slice a tomato and sprinkle on some black pepper, a pinch of sugar, and a pinch of salt. Spread on your favorite mayo over your toasted bread, add the tomatoes, your fried bacon, and some lettuce. Enjoy!