When Bad Things Happen to Good Pizza

Vegan Mom made the pizza dough from Vegan With a Vengeance (our favourite) today. Who doesn't love pizza on homemade crust? Well, the problem was that we have not gone shopping since we got back from the holiday weekend and the fridge is looking pretty empty. Nary a mushroom or pepper to be found. So, I thought I would make a veggie ground round to go with the pepperoni. The plan was to make something like the chick'n quick seitan but more . . . "beefy." At first, things seemed to be going well. I used gluten flour, ground TVP, and tapioca to get a firmer dough, while stir fry sauce, HP sauce, and soy sauce provided flavour and colour. Then, things started to go wrong. After steaming the seitan was pretty rubbery and a bit sticky to the touch. Undaunted, I pushed onward! I figured that if I chopped it up and fried the seitan it would dry out a bit. Well, it did dry it out. A lot. But still I pressed on! All in all, it did not wreck the pizza too much. After baking the seitan was verging on crunchy, but the flavour was OK. Oh well. Back to the test kitchen.