Things By Mike

Mike’s Kickass Homemade Calzones

Jul 14, 2007 Blogging, Food

I wrote out this recipe several months ago, sent it to a few friends and then promptly lost my copy of it. Fortunately a good friend of mine named Kymmi happened to still have it sitting in her G-mail inbox. Since I mentioned calzones recently in my food meme, I thought I’d post this up for anyone that would like to try making their own calzone. They take a while to prepare, but they’re worth it. Trust me :) So let’s get started, shall we? By the way the picture to the left is the best example I could find of how these look once you’ve finished baking them.

Part 1: The Dough. Oh yes.

Here’s what you need:

2 ¼ teaspoons active dry yeast (or 1 package)
1 teaspoon of honey
1 cup warm water
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour (might need to add ¼ to ½ cup more)
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil

And here’s what you do with it.

In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast and honey in ¼ cup warm water.

Now then, in a decent sized bowl combine the flour and the salt. Add the oil, the yeast mixture, and the remaining ¾ cup water. Use your favorite spoon (preferably a wooden one) and mix the dough together. About 3 to 5 minutes of stirring should do. Or just stop when it feels like your arm is going to fall off. If the dough is still sticky go ahead and add a smidge more flower, stir a bit more until it’s un-sticky. If it seems too dry do the opposite and add a bit more water.

Flip the dough out onto a clean work surface (a cutting board will do) and knead it by hand for 2 or 3 minutes. Now if you’ve done anything right up to this point the dough should be smooth and firm. Place it in a lightly oiled bowl an cover it up with plastic wrap. Let it sit and rise for about 30-45 minutes. When ready the dough should stretch when lightly pulled.

Take the dough out of the bowl and divide it into 2 to 4 equal sized balls. Now knead your balls for a few minutes. Place them again inside a bowl. Preferably a separate bowl for each, and cover with a damp cloth. Let them sit for about 15 to 20 minutes.

At this point the dough is pretty much ready. Woot. You can either use it immediately or place it in zip-lock bags and freeze it. It’s good for a couple days.

Part 2: The Ingredients – Mmm.

This part is kind of subjective because it’s really up to you what kind of meats (or no meats) that you like, but I’ll just write this going by how I like to make them and leave it up to you to substitute your favorite fillings.

Normally I like to add three meats to my calzones. Italian sausage, pepperoni and Canadian bacon. Regular bacon works nicely as well of course. For the sausage I find it’s easiest to just use sausage patties that most grocery stores will sell. They look just like hamburger patties, but it’s sausage instead. I’ll throw a couple of these into the frying pan and once they start to cook a bit I’ll use a fork or wooden spoon to begin to break up the patties and shred them as much as possible. While that’s cooking I whip out the Canadian bacon and cut that up into little triangles. When the sausage is about half way done I’ll toss the Canadian bacon into the pan, and you can even throw in your pepperoni as well, especially if it’s thicker sliced. The idea here by putting the Canadian bacon and pepperoni in the pan is to help bring out their flavors a bit. Once you’ve finished cooking and heating up the meat, find a bowl large enough to dump that all into and set it aside. You may want to line with the bowl with a couple paper towels to help drain off some of the grease from the sausage.

Now it’s time for the most important ingredient in a calzone, the ricotta cheese. If you’re making two calzones you can typically use about 2 to 3 cups of ricotta cheese, depending on how much you like. Don’t go overboard though. If you fill a calzone too much it can break open and leak. That’s just a huge mess you want to try to avoid. So now then, take your ricotta cheese and dump that into a mixing bowl. Grab one egg and mix that into the ricotta. Why are we doing this? The egg helps to keep the ricotta firm when it bakes. If you don’t do this you’ll most certainly have ricotta oozing all over the place. It also helps add a little flavor.

Once you’ve thoroughly mixed the ricotta and egg together the next step is to add some more flavor. I like to add black pepper, garlic powder and Romano cheese. The kind you shake over spaghetti. How much of each you add here is up to you. Start with a little bit of each and try a bit of the mix until it tastes right to you.

At this point the only other thing you need is mozzarella cheese. For two calzones a couple handfuls of mozzarella will do. Don’t add that to the ricotta mix though. Just set it aside for now.

Part 3: Assembling the Calzone – almost done!

Okay, remember those dough balls you set aside earlier? Now you need those. Before you get started though, now is a good time to preheat your oven. Set it to about 375 degrees.

Get yourself a couple pizza pans. Preferably round ones. 12 inch pans are just perfect. Grease both pans. Now take your first ball of dough and begin flattening it out on your first pizza pan. I like get it as round as possible. Don’t make it too thin. You want the dough to be about ¼ inch thick. If you have trouble flattening out the dough, get yourself a rolling pin. They work wonders.

Once you have the dough flattened out into a nice circle it’s time to add the ingredients. The trick is to add ingredients to only one side of the dough, and don’t get too close to the edge. Keep your filling about ¼ inch away from the edge of the dough. Start with your ricotta mix. Then throw in your meat and finally top that off with mozzarella cheese. Again, don’t go overboard. You don’t want this thing to fall apart in the oven because you over-stuffed it.

Now, once you have all your fillings in place you need to grab the empty side of the dough and wrap it over the fillings. Now you should have a half-circle. Roll the edges of the dough together and close everything up.

Grab yourself one more egg and beat it in a small bowl. Dip a paper towel in the egg and use that to brush egg over the top of your dough. Try to cover the entire top of the calzone. Not too much, just enough to “wet” it. This will make the crust bake up nice and crispy. Now sprinkle a little more Romano cheese on top. Voila! You’re all set.

Now go stick this bad boy into the oven and give it about 20 – 25 minutes of baking time. You’ll know it’s done when the crust turns a nice golden brown color. It’s going to rise a bit more in the oven, so expect a pretty decent sized calzone. Once you take it out of the oven let it cool for a bit and if you’d like you can cut if in half. It makes a little easier to eat.

Last but not least top it with your favorite pizza, spaghetti or marinara sauce. I usually like to heat up the sauce while the calzone is in the oven.

Repeat this whole process for your second calzone. You can of course cook more than one in the oven if you have a couple racks in there.

Enjoy!

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