Pizza Calzones

I pretty regularly read the blog SimplyScratch, and recently came across a recipe there for Pizza Calzones. It looked like such an easy and tasty recipe that I decided to make it for friends this past weekend. I knew I wasn't going to have time to make the dough on my own, so I picked some up from the deli area of the fancy double-decker Harris Teeter nearby.

I sauteed up some mild sausage (next time I might try the spicy, but with guests I try not to add too much spice, just in case)

and sauteed a red onion

and then set those ingredients aside while I doctored up some tomato sauce. (I just used regular tomato sauce but added in some spices to make it a little bit more special.)

Then comes the fun part -- assembling the calzone. A layer of tomato sauce, sausage, onions, pepperoni, and lots of shredded cheese.

Twist the edges together and brush with an egg before popping them in the oven for about twenty minutes.

Pull them out when they're golden brown and serve!

These were really good and I would definitely make them again.

Next time I'll add more filling, because these felt like they had a lot of crust, but overall they were really tasty and an easy meal!

Double-Crusted Pizza from Southern Italy (p. 184)

This was my last recipe of the old year (I made it for NYE dinner), and also the last pizza recipe in the book. Sad! The recipes are starting to dwindle!

A double-crusted pizza is more like a savory pie than a pizza, because it has crust on both the bottom and the top, with the pizza deliciousness housed between the two layers. I was inspired by a recent pizza I had from Capital Creations that had a cornmeal crust (that, and the fact that I'm low on regular flour) so I made The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook's Basic Pizza Dough but used cornmeal instead of whole wheat flour. It turned out nicely.

The innards of the pizza came together quickly -- sauté yellow onion and smooshed garlic cloves in olive oil until soft and then add in your washed greens (I used spinach) until they're nice and soft.

Then add in chopped olives (kalamata -- yum!), plumped golden raisins, and pine nuts and cook for just a few minutes. Flavor with salt and pepper. The recipe also called for anchovies but knowing Matt wouldn't love them I left those out.

Once the pizza dough was ready, I lined a pie dish with about half of it and then filled it up with everything in my skillet. I formed a circle with the rest of the dough and placed it over the top of the pie, brushed it with a beaten egg and cut some slices in it it so that it wouldn't all explode in the oven.

And then into the oven, and out it came, perfect and beautiful.

We liked this. I think I prefer a single-crusted pizza, but this was definitely enjoyable.

Very filling, but enjoyable.

spinach -- $3.29

yellow onion -- $1.00

olives -- $3.90 (some left)

golden raisins -- $3.15 (tons left)

pine nuts -- $4.20 (about half left)

Total Cost of Double-Crusted Pizza from Southern Italy: $15.54

($1.94 per serving)

Middle Eastern Pizza -- Variation (p. 182)

I reserved some of the dough from the Middle Eastern Pizza I made a few days ago so that I could try this Palestinian variation of it.

Again, I toasted my pine nuts and put them in a bowl. With them, I stirred in raw minced onion, garlic, tomato, and a serrano pepper as well as ground beef. In a separate bowl I combined tahini and white wine vinegar and then mixed it in with the meat mixture. The recipe also called for allspice, but I forgot to put it in.

After that, the pizza has the same prep and cook time as the earlier one.

This is another total winner. We loved it, and once we're back to normal cooking I'll definitely add these two pizzas into my rotation.

CSA tomatoes -- $2.00

serrano pepper -- $.04

beef -- $1.10

pine nuts -- $5.99 (most of it is left, I just needed to re-stock)

tahini -- $7.49  (most of it is left, I just needed to re-stock)

Total Cost of Middle Eastern Pizza -- Variation : $16.62

Middle Eastern Pizza (p. 180)

Better start writing down your grocery list, because you want to make this pizza. For realz. Unless you're a vegetarian, in which case you should still make it but buy some weird soy product instead of meat.

The dough is made like normal pizza dough, except that it has olive oil and plain yogurt in it. I liked the directions for making the dough because they told me to knead until it was "as soft as your earlobe." I willingly obliged. I've got pretty soft earlobes, so this took a while.

While the dough is rising (leave it alone for at least two hours), you can make the pizza topic. Sauté pine nuts in olive oil until they are golden brown.

I always always burn mine a little, but they still taste delicious.   Also sauté onions for the topping, but then you're done with using the oven top -- everything else goes in raw.

Place the pine nuts and onions in a bowl and add in chopped tomatoes, green pepper and parsley, ground beef or lamb, allspice, cumin, pepper, tomato concentrate, and fresh lemon juice (or something else that will add a little tartness to the topping). Stir everything together into a thick paste.

Roll the dough out, making the pizza crusts very thin.

Add the topping to the pizza spreading it out to almost reach the edges -- these pizzas won't have much of a crust.

Bake for 10 to 15 minutes  and then serve.

This was really good, and then we added the recommended garnish -- strained yogurt -- and it was incredible. Make this pizza, and absolutely use the garnish.

ground beef --  $1.10

onion -- $.71

yogurt -- $1.89

tomatoes -- $2.49

Total Cost of Middle Eastern Pizza: $6.19

Pissaladiere (p. 178)

This is a Provencal Pizza, with a delicious thick crust and flavored with anchovies and olives.

I came home on my lunch break yesterday to start the dough since it needed to rise for a couple of hours. To make, stir yeast into warm water and leave for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, make a well in all-purpose flour mixed with salt and, once its ready, pour in the yeast as well as a mixed egg and some olive oil. Mix these ingredients together until they form a dough, and then continue kneading until it is soft and smooth. I needed to add more flour to make the dough less sticky.

Set this aside for at least two hours.

To make the pizza topping, sauté onion and garlic in olive oil until very soft.

Stir in peeled and chopped tomatoes and continue cooking until the majority of the liquid from the tomatoes is absorbed. Add slivered fresh basil, salt, and pepper.

I used a springform pan to spread my dough into, but any sort of greased metal pie pan will do. Spread the dough across the bottom and sides of the pan with your knuckles and then pour in the onion and tomato topping. Crisscross anchovy fillets across the top of the pizza and place pitted black olives in the crosses.

Put the pizza on a baking sheet and cook for about 20 minutes, then lower the temperature of the oven and cook for 20 more. The dough should be golden brown and the filling bubbly.

Matt actively disliked the anchovies and the olives, and I agree the cooked olives were a little weird -- it might have been better to have just put the olives on after the pizza was cooked. That said, the crust was amazing and I would definitely make it again -- it was fluffy and chewy and had a nice flavor. I enjoyed this and am happy to have it for leftovers, but I probably wouldn't make this exact recipe again.

olives -- $2.32 (about half left)

onions --  $2.56

tomatoes -- $1.45

Total Cost of Pissaladiere: $6.33

Catalan Pizza (p. 183)

Catalonia is in Northern Spain and has it's own specific style of pizza, which I made last night. Why, you ask, did I make so many pizzas last night? Pretty much because they're easy, and because I'm going out of town for the weekend, and leftover pizza will be lovely to leave for my husband.

So, Catalan Pizza. This uses a different dough than the basic kind I've used for other pizzas, and it has a base of cornmeal. The dough still uses flour and yeast, but the yeast is dissolved in water, and olive oil is also used to add both flavor and elasticity to the dough. It takes about 10 minutes to knead the ingredients together to the point where it actually starts to resemble dough, at which point it's placed in a bowl to rise for a couple of hours.

While the dough is rising, the vegetables (onions, peppers, and peeled/de-seeded tomatoes) need to be chopped to create the "sauce" of the pizza. Catalan Pizza doesn't have sauce in the traditional sense, just very finely chopped vegetables that are mixed with a little bit of sweet paprika and salt. The mixture smells delicious and fresh and promises for a pizza with wonderful flavor.

Once the dough is ready, you quarter it and make a four thin crusts with slightly upturned edges to hold in all the veggies. Then just load them high and bake. Mine took a little longer than the recipe called for -- maybe about 40 or so minutes.

I didn't actually get to try these until lunchtime today, and I think they probably would have been better soon after coming out of the oven. Still tasty, mind you, but the juices of the veggies had soaked into some of the crust, so it wasn't quite as firm as it could have been. Next time I might use a little more salt, pepper, and paprika as well to give it more of a punch in terms of flavor. 

onion -- $.84

2 red peppers -- $4.58

2 ripe tomatoes -- $3.24

Total Cost of Catalan Pizza: $8.66

Pizza Margherita (p. 175)

Pizza Margherita is very similar to Pizza alla Marinara, and I was able to use the leftover sauce that I had made (and frozen) two weeks ago.

This time, when I made the Basic Pizza Dough (p. 171), I let it rise overnight and spent a little more time kneading it after the first rise. I also used a little more olive oil during the second rise (you coat the bowl with olive oil and then place the ball of dough inside), which I think added something to the dough when it came time to form it into the pizza crust. The olive oil made it a little bit easier to toss the dough, and it seemed to create a larger crust this time around.

To make the Pizza Margherita, you spread the tomato sauce over the crust and add mozzarella, salt and pepper, basil, and parmigiano cheese -- it's a very simple recipe. Unfortunately, my grocery store didn't have fresh basil (honestly, what is that about?) so I had to use dried. It would definitely be better with fresh, but the flavors were still great, and the salt and pepper added a lot to it.

This was really delicious. I think that this crust with pretty much anything on it would be awesome, it's really all about the basic dough recipe.

Since the recipe makes enough crust for two pizzas I threw another one together with goat cheese that I picked up at the farmer's market last week. I always love goat cheese, but I think the mozzarella pizza was the winner for the night.

mozzarella -- $3.99

Total Cost of Pizza Margherita: $3.99

Pizza alla Marinara (p.174)

Yum. This is delicious. Also, it counts as three recipes -- Basic Pizza Dough (p. 171), Plain Tomato Sauce (p. 266), and then the pizza itself.

When I got home from work today, I immediately started on the dough, since its the most time consuming part of the recipe. To start, you combine yeast, flour, and some hot water and then leave it alone for about half an hour while the yeast does its magic. After that time is up, add more flour and salt water and it starts to resemble a very wet, sticky dough. Kneading it for another ten minutes with more flour does the trick, and it becomes elastic-y without sticking to your fingers. It's very very messy until you get to that point -- I was about elbow deep in gooey dough for a while there, and was pretty worried it wasn't going to come together. After it's at a dough-like stage, it just sits and rises for about an hour, and then you can form your pizza crusts.

During the time that the dough took to rise I worked on the tomato sauce, which is just tomatoes, garlic, and some olive oil. I think my main problem with the recipe is that I don't own a food mill, and I don't even really know what one is. After the ingredients have boiled together on the stove for a while, it's all supposed to go through a food mill to separate out the seeds and skins. The recipe warns against putting the sauce in a food processor because the seeds are very bitter and would ruin the sauce. I dumped the whole mess into a colander hoping to strain out the stuff that shouldn't go in the sauce but the remainder was way too thin to hold together on top of the pizza, and even after trying to thicken it on the stove top I knew it wasn't going to work quite right. I added some tomato paste that I had in my pantry and it became the consistency that I needed, but that definitely wasn't called for in the recipe. If you have a food mill, though, you might not have this problem at all.

Once the dough and sauce were ready I began assembling two separate pizzas. Mediterranean pizzas generally don't call for cheese -- they're primarily sauce, olive oil, garlic, oregano and whatever toppings (generally vegetables) you want to put on them. I had some leftover olives that I sliced, and, since we love cheese, put feta on one pizza and parmigiana on the other.

The pizzas only need to be baked for 5 or 6 minutes, and when they came out they smelled and looked delicious. My husband and I both decided this was one of our favorite recipes so far -- the dough is wonderful, and we're looking forward to making them again with some other more creative toppings. The feta pizza was our favorite -- it added a really nice salty kick, and was great with the olives.

Next time I make this I'll probably do the dough a day in advance so that we can eat a little earlier. Has anyone had any luck freezing pizza dough? It'd be nice to make a bunch at once and save it for when it's needed. The recipe also makes much more sauce than is needed, which is currently in my freezer waiting for our next pizza night.

tomatoes -- $13.54

Total Cost of Pizza alla Marinara: $13.54