You guys are going to laugh but I have actually only ever had one calzone in my entire life. I was enticed by this calzones video- is anyone actually surprised? When we saw this as an option on Pinterest, we thought it would make for a fun Friday night activity (and we weren’t wrong)!
Ingredients– We decided to buy dough instead of trying to make out own (in case you haven’t heard, yeast is hard to find these days). We had mozzarella cheese (it seems to be in many of these dinners that we have been trying- hello Eggplant Parm and BBQ Zucchini Boats), sauce, butter, and even parsley leftover from last week. For toppings, Ben decided on Pepperoni and Black Olives while I went with my favorite pizza toppings: broccoli and bacon!
I read the directions on the dough this afternoon to make sure we avoided any timing disasters this evening. I pulled the dough out at 4pm so it would be ready to craft at 6pm! I pat the dough with flour and cut into 4 sections and started rolling out the dough, with my water bottle because why would I own a roller, that would be too easy?
I was losing steam with these dough balls. They were sticking a lot to my parchment paper even with all of the flour. I couldn’t get them to stretch quite as large and as oval as I had hoped. After stretching out one dough ball I realized that her recipe called for 2 pounds of dough and I only bought one. These were going to be hot pockets instead of full-size calzones.
I kept struggling with dough rolling while Ben topped his two calzones and prepared the butter coating. He went off to do his own thing while I did mine and then closed both of ours up. Mine was a little easier because I tried to leave the edges clean. Ben had sauce way over the edges which was less than ideal for closing. I brushed the tops with the butter, garlic powder, and parsley mixture and poked with a knife in a few places to let them steam.
We popped the hot pockets, I mean calzones, in the oven and cooked for 20 minutes at 425°F – She suggested 15 minutes but they did not look brown enough for us at 15 minutes. This is the point when I realized I forgot to take pictures of us topping our calzones and Ben so kindly slipped in a “I left mine open for you to get a photo” . . . sure you did -_-
Overall Rating: “Wow, look at those adult Hot Pockets” – Ben
In all seriousness, we both enjoyed the calzones and would recommend the recipe. If you only get one pound of dough, I recommend 2 Calzones instead of 4 hot pockets. I also probably would not add broccoli again, it came out steamed and as much as I love broccoli, I strongly dislike steamed broccoli. It definitely was not our healthiest dinner but still fun to throw it in there!
Let me know if you try it as the original recipe or with your own modifications!
Link to recipe: https://www.julieseatsandtreats.com/calzone-recipe/
xoxo
Krysta
