Spicy Vegan Pepperoni Seitan

I take only 1% of the credit for this, the remaining howevermany percent going to Radioisotope at Sparkpeople, Joanna Vaught, and Julie Hasson (y'all can fight over proportional credit).

By mashing together Radioisotope's fantastic pepperoni spice recipe (she uses tofu) with the steamed seitan sausage numminess of Joanna and Julie (and a little wingin' it on my own), I came up with a pretty decent pepperoni.

Dry ingredients:

• 2-1/4 cups vital wheat gluten
  
• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
  
• 1/4 cup garbanzo or soy flour (replace with another 1/4 cup vital wheat gluten for firmer pepperoni)
  
• 1 T paprika
  
• 4 t ground black pepper
  
• 2 t salt
  
• 2 t fennel seeds, crushed
  
• 2 t Frontier vegan beef broth powder
  
• 2 t smoked paprika
  
• 1 t crushed red pepper
  
• 1 t anise seed, crushed
  
• 1 t garlic powder
  
• 1 t onion powder
  
• 1 t ground mustard
  
• 1 t cumin
  

Wet ingredients:

• 2-1/2 cups water (opt: replace 1 cup of water with your fave broth and delete the broth powder, above)
  
• 2 T olive oil
  
• 2 t liquid smoke (or sub 1-2 t smoked paprika in addition to the 2 t smoked paprika above)
  

Method:

1. Put a steamer's worth of the water on to boil. I use a stock pot with probably a quart of water.
   
2. Mix the dry stuff.
   
3. Mix the wet stuff.
   
4. Mix 'em together. The dough is really easy to work, so you don't need to dirty up the mixer. Just throw it in a bowl and mix it with a spoon or by hand. Hand-mixing bonus: pepperoni-flavored fingers.
   
5. Using a 1/2-cup measuring cup, scoop out a hunk of dough. Drop it on a piece of foil (Julie suggests muslin as a less-waste alternative). Whip out your trusty bamboo-placemat-that-thinks-it's-a-sushi-mat to shape the foil-wrapped dough into a sausage shape. Alternatively, you can just use shape the dough manually, but what fun is that?
   
6. Repeat until you're out of dough.
   
7. Arrange your soon-to-be pepperoni sausages in steamer trays and steam them for 30-40 minutes.
   

Let 'em cool. Fridge 'em. Slice 'em. Eat 'em. Why not dig out the springform pan you bought for that ill-fated cheesecake experiment and make a stuffed pizza?

Tip: If you're using a food processor to slice your pepperoni, freeze the sausages for half an hour or so first. The sausages are a little soft, but they're moist enough to take a good freeze without getting unworkably hard.