Homemade Calzones

As you may know if you're a regular follower of the blog, I'm a big fan of homemade pizza. It's definitely one of my all-time favorite homemade meals to make. It's so versatile and soooo yummy!! 

I've posted a few times about pizza in the past, including:

Savory Pumpkin Pizza Dough

BBQ Chicken Pizza with Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Peppers, Onions, and Rosemary

Root Vegetable Pizza with Sweet Potato, Onion, Rutabaga, and Acorn Squash (pictured below)

And I've even posted about a Breakfast Pizza, as well as a dessert style Candy Pizza!

So, I think you get the gist. I love pizza. ;)

Last week, however, I wanted to change it up. I was craving those typical flavors, but I didn't feel like doing the "same old" thing and make traditional pizza. So, of course, making calzones was the next best alternative! I've never actually made homemade calzones before, but I assumed it would be somewhat easy, and I didn't really follow a recipe for this...

I used a Stop n' Shop brand whole wheat pizza dough, divided it into two halves, and rolled each half out like I would if I were making pizza.

I baked a couple chicken breasts in the oven, one with bbq sauce and one with a plain tomato sauce.

Next, I sauteed an assortment of veggies, pictured here below (red peppers, onions, broccoli, and mushrooms). I believe I sauteed them in olive oil, and seasoned them with salt, pepper, and rosemary.

Next, Mike and I each built our own calzone. In mine, on one half of the dough, I first layered some of the already fully-cooked chicken breast, and I topped it with some more tomato sauce. I decided to cook both the chicken and veggies ahead of time because I wasn't sure how well they'd cook inside the dough.

Then I threw in some veggies; I just used the peppers, onions, and mushrooms in mine. Oh, and I added some chopped tomato too (which I did not saute ahead of time).

What's next? Cheese of course! I sprinkled some shredded mozzarella and grated parmesan on mine. When my fillings were all ready to go, I simply folded the other half of the dough over top of them.

(that looks like a lot of cheese, but it's not, I promise)

My and Mike's calzone's were a bit different in size. Oops! But who needs perfection when you're making calzones? Not me!

To seal the calzones, I just pressed the outside edges together with a fork.

How cute is my handsome fiance? ♥

I baked the calzones on my awesome pizza stone at 425 degrees for about 12 - 15 minutes, until they were lightly browned.

Apparently the dough of Mike's calzone was a bit thinner? That's my guess why his was more browned after baking.

Here's an inside shot of Mike's calzone. So good! In his, he put the bbq chicken, extra bbq sauce, all the different veggies, and an assortment of three cheeses (mozzarella, parm, and pepper jack!!).

And this was mine. Loved them both! We shared. I ate about 1/3 of mine and 1/3 of Mike's. I had intended to serve these with a side salad, but on this particular weekday I had already been busy in the kitchen for 2 hours before starting on the calzones, and to be honest, I just got too lazy and tired to prep all the veggies for a salad too. But that would have been the perfect accompaniment to these calzones!

The only thing I wish had happened was that the dough had risen more and was a bit thicker. It remained pretty thin, but that's ultimately okay. I'm not sure if I rolled it out too thin or if it maybe had something to do with the fact that this dough had been frozen and I had thawed it before using it? Not sure.

Either way, bottom line = I'd totally make calzones like this again! I'd also be excited to make an entirely veggie calzone without meat. Looove my veggies!