Seitan, revisited, and BBQ "chicken" pizza

I tried making seitan again today, modifying the recipe somewhat, and I was much more pleased with the results. Yeah! This time I left out the garlic, and all but one Tbsp of the soy sauce, and cooked it in mostly water, spiked with a couple cups of veggie broth. It yielded a much milder flavor, which I think will work better in recipes than the batch I made several months ago. Hooray!

To give you an idea, this has the taste and texture of the pre-cooked Tyson chicken strips you can buy in the freezer section at grocery stores. It's not the same as fresh cooked meat, but it's a good substitute, and can be sliced and used in place of meat in any recipe. Nice!

Tonight I used it in place of chicken for a BBQ seitan pizza. I made my own pizza dough, then brushed it with olive oil, covered it with mozzarella cheese, drizzled it with BBQ sauce (I love Sweet Baby Ray's!), then topped it with chopped seitan, red onions and cilantro. BBQ chicken pizza is one of my favorite foods of all time, so it's great to be able to make a vegetarian version of it. I guess I could just leave the chicken/seitan off altogether, but I like what it adds to the pizza, so seitan is a great option.

Before baking:



And after:



Look at it! Doesn't it look like a piece of chicken on there?



If you want to try making your own seitan, here's the modified recipe. I'll probably delete the old one before too long.

Seitan

1 cup vital wheat gluten flour
3 Tbsp nutritional yeast flakes
3/4 cup vegetable broth
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 cups cold vegetable stock
8 cups cold water
1/2 tsp salt

Mix together the vital wheat gluten flour and nutritional yeast. Combine the 3/4 cups broth, soy sauce and olive oil, and add to the dry ingredients. Stir to combine -- it will come together in just a couple seconds -- then turn out onto a cutting board or the counter and knead for 3 to 4 minutes. The dough should be elastic. You don't need to flour your hands or the cutting board to knead it. It will be damp, but it will stick to itself.

Divide the dough into 3 pieces. Shape them as desired. You can just drop the lumps in, flatten them slightly, or shape into a log and roll up in aluminum foil, twisting the ends tightly, giving a summer sausage kind of shape. Cook the logs in the foil, then unwrap after cooking.

Combine the cold stock, water, and salt in a large pot. Add the dough pieces. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat, but as soon as it boils, turn the heat down to a low simmer.

Cover, leaving a little room for steam to escape, and simmer for 60 minutes, then turn the heat off, and let it sit for 15-20 minutes. Remove it from the liquid, then slice it into pieces as desired. It can be stored in the fridge in some of the cooking liquid.