Well gee, it has been a while, hasn't it? I apologize for not getting this up sooner. I meant to post this entry ages ago, but, well, you know how it goes. Anyway, this post is doubly exciting because I made a new kind of seitan with a new method! I had never attempted baking seitan before and it definitely does come out differently this way. Before getting into that, though, I want to say how yummy this was! I took this from Vegan Dad's seitan pepperoni recipe but ended up making a lot of alterations, mainly out of my own lazyness. One thing I do regret is that I ended up not using any chili flakes at all, so it really didn't have any spiciness. Next time I plan to use some of these, plus more black pepper. Even so this was rather delicious.
This baking method was really different than the method I'm used to using. First off the dough was much drier, which I think contributed to the good dense texture. Also, after it was put in the oven it was much easer than simmering it because you can just pop it in and let it bake without any tending.
There are the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients... very weird! The liquid was mostly tomato paste, and not much of it. Smelled rather nice, though!
Here we have the kneaded dough. It was very stiff and rather difficult to combine-- at least more than I'm used to. The little white bits in it are garlic. After this I rolled it out into a little log and wrapped it in aluminum foil. They say not to wrap too tightly but I don't really know what they mean. It's a dough-- it's just going to take the shape of what you put it in, right?
I did my best not to wrap it "too tightly" (whatever that means) and popped it into the oven! Easy as pie. Easier, actually. Pies are pretty difficult.
Ta da! Deliciousness. I was a little concerned with how squishy it seemed when coming out of the oven, but after cooling it firmed up considerably (especially after some time in the fridge). The best part of this whole thing? The possibilities! The first thing I did with it was make a delicious sandwich inspired by The Vegan Lunch Box: grilled mozzerella and "pepperoni," dipped in marinara sauce. Of course, VLB doesn't use real mozzerella but, well, I'm not good all the time.
This was way too yummy. Another use I found was that if you pan-fry it in a little olive oil, this becomes a fantastic addition to pasta. I'll likely have a post of this up before long because over spring break I intend to make fresh pasta and breadsticks with my mom (go-go-pasta attachment!), and I imagine I'll have to make a log of this for her. For now I've got to dash (class in half an hour!) but I promise to post again much sooner than this one came...
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| One more action shot for the road. |
