Vegan "pepperoni" pizza

So, this probably won't be my official Vegan Recipe of the Month for September, but I thought it was worth sharing. Last weekend, Brian made a pizza using our homemade vegan mozzarella, as he's done this many times since we found the recipe. But this one had a new twist: it was a vegan "pepperoni" pizza. After his success making a facsimile of Polish sausage from Soy Curls, he started wondering if he could also turn them into a close approximation of pepperoni. He searched online for "vegan Soy Curl pepperoni" and found a recipe for exactly that on a site called Courtney's Homestead, and since he happened to have all the ingredients on hand, he decided to give it a try. 

The recipe was pretty straightforward. After hydrating the Soy Curls, he tossed them with oil and a mixture of ground spices—fennel, garlic, smoked paprika, and crushed red pepper—and roasted them on a baking sheet. The recipe called for a whopping two teaspoons of crushed red pepper, but Brian halved this to keep the spice down to a manageable level. He also made only a half batch, using one cup of Soy Curls instead of two, and found that to be a sufficient amount for a whole pizza. However, since he wasn't sure how I would like it, he hedged his bets by putting it on only two-thirds of the pie.

As you can see, this vegan substitute doesn't look that much like real pepperoni. It looks a little bit more like sausage, and to me, it also tasted much more like it. Granted, it had been a long time since I'd had any kind of meat on a pizza, so my memory might not have been accurate, but the main flavor I could taste was fennel, which I associate more with Italian sausage. If garlic and paprika had been the dominant flavors, I might have found it a bit more convincing as pepperoni, but it would still have lacked the "characteristic tangy flavor" that, according to The Spruce Eats, comes from Lactobacillus bacteria. (It also wasn't greasy enough to be a really convincing copy of either sausage or pepperoni, but I didn't consider that a bad thing.)

Although I wouldn't call this a very close facsimile of pepperoni, it was still an enjoyable addition to the pizza. It provided a little added flavor and texture variety, as well as a welcome dose of protein (which our vegan mozzarella doesn't really provide). So, on the whole, I'd say this vegan pizza topping is worth trying, but maybe don't call it "vegan pepperoni." People who are expecting pepperoni will most likely find this disappointing, but if it's labeled as something like "Soy Curl sausage," they'll probably eat it up quite happily.