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!

Barbecue Chicken Pizza with Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Peppers, Onions, and Rosemary on Multigrain Dough

Homemade pizza is probably in my top three dinners of all time. I love its versatility and the opportunity it provides to have a fairly healthy meal that's also a comfort food. :) I've written previously about some of my favorite combinations of toppings, and I've also shared an awesome savory pumpkin pizza dough recipe on the blog. Today I'm sharing a "recipe" for a most delicious pizza that Mike and I made last week - barbecue chicken pizza with roasted sweet potatoes, peppers, and onions on multigrain dough. YUM!

I used the multigrain pizza dough from Whole Foods when we made this pizza. Oh my goodness. This dough is the best! A Whole Foods very recently opened where I live, and I am sooo excited about it. Last week I picked up the last bag of multigrain dough that was on the shelves at the time, and I think it was meant to be. WF multigrain dough + me = a match made in heaven. Try not to be too jealous, fiance Mike. ;)

Now, this recipe doesn't really have exact measurements, per se. When making pizza, I just eyeball everything. So I apologize for not having measurements, but you'll get the idea!

Ingredients:

-pizza dough of your choice (you can make your own, of course!)

-barbecue sauce (I used a honey bbq sauce)

-cooked chicken, shredded or cut into bite-sized pieces (I baked a medium sized chicken breast with bbq sauce and then cut it into bite-sized pieces)

-roasted sweet potatoes (about 3/4 cup or so; I used leftovers I had roasted a couple nights prior, and at that time they were seasoned with salt, pepper, and rosemary)

-pepper (any color!), sliced

-onion, diced

-dried rosemary or other herbs of your choice

-shredded cheese of your choice (I used a store bought "Italian" blend of cheeses)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. If using a pizza stone, preheat it in the oven (to prevent it from cracking). Saute your onion and pepper in olive oil, over medium heat on the stove, for 6 or 8 minutes until they start to get soft (they will cook more in the oven). Spread out your dough until it's as thick or thin as you'd like. Evenly spread a few tablespoons (or so!) of bbq sauce across the dough. Place the rest of your toppings (cooked chicken and veggies) evenly on top of the bbq sauce, and then sprinkle with your preferred flavor(s) and amount of cheese. I typically don't like my pizza too cheesy, as I don't want the cheese to overpower the taste of all the other delicious toppings! And it's healthier with less cheese too. ;) We chose to sprinkle some dried rosemary over top of our pizza before baking it. Feel free to add whatever herbs you might like!

(Terrible lighting there; sorry! But this is the dough with the bbq sauce spread on it.)

If you preheated a pizza stone, transfer the pizza to the stone and bake for 10 - 12 minutes (that's how long my pizzas take anyway!) or until the outer crust edges start to turn a light golden brown. I have preheated my pizza stone before, and I also haven't... It's turned out fine every time, but I guess you should probably do whatever your pizza stone's instructions tell you to do! I have an awesome Pampered Chef stone that my mom gave me. Love it!

Let your pizza sit for a couple minutes before slicing it. Then, ENJOY and try to hold back from eating the entire thing in one sitting. ;)

Below you'll see a slice of the bbq chicken pizza, but what's that on the left, you wonder? Well, it's the other pizza we made the same night! The second pizza was a tasty broccoli, tomato, and goat cheese pizza on Whole Foods white dough. Also super delicious! However, the bbq chicken and sweet potato pizza really stole the show, which is why I decided to share that one with you.

What toppings and flavor combinations do you like best on your own homemade pizza?!

Hope everyone is having a great week so far! :)

Savory Pumpkin Pizza Dough!

Welcome back! Hope everyone is having a great weekend thus far. Since I made the recipe I'm going to share with you here, I have not stopped thinking about it. Okay, well maybe I have been able to think about and focus on other things, but let's just say that thoughts of this savory pumpkin pizza dough have been dancing around in my mind quite a bit since I made it a few days ago. ;-) It has changed my life.

I found this recipe several weeks ago when I was perusing an awesome new cooking blog I found called "The Cooking Photographer." I saw her recipe for savory pumpkin pizza dough and knew I'd just have to make it at some point! That time finally came a few days ago when I had some leftover canned pumpkin that I wanted to use up. Suddenly, it hit me! Make that pumpkin pizza dough, Colleen!!!

So I did. :)

All in all, this was a very easy recipe. It does call for active dry yeast, so it involves letting the dough rise for an hour or so. It's important to know that ahead of time so you can plan accordingly! The link to the recipe can be found here, but I'm also going to copy and paste the instructions for you below.

Ingredients:
½ cup barely warm water
1 teaspoon honey
1 Tablespoon active dry yeast
3 ½ cups bread flour
1 cup canned pumpkin, (Not pumpkin pie filling)
2 Tablespoons olive oil, plus more for the bowl
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon garlic powder
Instructions:
1. Measure water in a wet measuring cup and stir in the honey and yeast. Set aside for 5 minutes.
2. In a stand mixer with a dough hook add all the ingredients including the yeast mixture and knead for several minutes.
3. Turn the dough onto a clean surface and knead with your hands for a couple more minutes. Coat a large bowl with a little olive oil, toss in the dough turning coat once to coat, and cover in plastic wrap.
4. Let the dough rise in a warm place for about an hour, or until large and poufy.

I followed the recipe almost exactly. The only things I did differently were omit the onion powder and add about 1 teaspoon of dried rosemary instead. I could really pick up on the rosemary flavor in the dough, so I was pleased with that addition! I have to say that the pumpkin flavor was subtle but still there, for sure. I think the level of "pumpkin-ness" was just right, personally. I even think that people who don't care for pumpkin might even like this dough!!

Time for pics!

I made this pizza on my awesome new Pampered Chef pizza stone. LOVE this new addition to my kitchen! I've used it twice so far, and I already can't wait to use it again. :)

On this particular pizza, I put on a regular tomato sauce with sauteed green peppers and onions, roasted asparagus, and roasted sweet potatoes (both the asparagus and sweet potatoes I had leftover from roasting the night before). And on half the pizza, I put small pieces of leftover baked pork chop I had cooked a few days before. Yummm. I love using up leftovers as pizza toppings! Remember my other post about being creative with homemade pizza? This pizza is definitely a good example of that creativity. ;-)

Mozzarella!

Here she is in the oven. :) I baked the pizza at 400 degrees for about 15 - 17 minutes or so.

Look at that puffy crust!!

This dough was SO good. It was dough-y and airy, yet it was slightly crispy around the outside crust too. It was just the right texture for pizza dough, in the Barbershop's opinion. And as I said earlier, the pumpkin flavor was noticeably there but definitely not overpowering at all. It's a winning recipe, friends!

I had a little extra dough, so in addition to the large pizza, I also made a couple rolls.

Check out that inside of that roll! Oh my goodness. I could have easily eaten like 6 of these rolls in one sitting. Next time I make this dough I think I might just make rolls out of it! (by the way, if you look closely at the picture of the roll's inside, you can see a speck of rosemary on the left side there...click on the picture to enlarge it so you can see it :)).

If you're looking to be slightly adventurous in the kitchen, I definitely think you should try this savory pumpkin pizza dough. And when you do, let me know how it's changed your life because I know it will.

:)

Ooey Gooey Cinnamon Buns

Yummmm...check out the ooey gooey goodness in the picture above. Love it! I made these cinnamon buns on a whim tonight since I wasn't planning to bake anything in addition to the chocolate chip cookies. So here's how I came to make them... After work I had to run a few errands, and during my travels, I was right near a Bertuccis, one of my absolute favorite restaurants. Sometimes I buy raw pizza dough from Bertuccis to make homemade pizza or homemade rolls. I haven't actually made cinnamon buns with the dough before, although my good friend Elizabeth did once when she used to work with us... I have a very vivid memory of that day! They were soooo good. Anyway, I ended up going into Bertuccis today for two random reasons. At the time, I really had to use the bathroom so that was one excuse for going in. And I was also pretty hungry as I was running my errands, so I thought maybe I'll buy dough in order to get a couple rolls! In the past when I've purchased the raw dough they often throw in a few baked rolls, which are super yummy. I wanted a roll as a snack today so I had to buy the dough! Haha. Until I got home though, I didn't really have a plan for the dough. I didn't have pizza ingredients on hand, and that's when I remembered my friend Elizabeth's cinnamon buns that time...so I thought I'd give them a shot! Here's what I did (sans any formal recipe!). Oh, and if you don't live near a Bertuccis, my guess is this would also work with any store bought brand of pizza dough or white bread dough. Read on for the steps to make these, and then you'll see the pictures of the entire process. :)

First I worked the dough with my hands to spread it a bit, and then I rolled it out more with my handy dandy Pampered Chef rolling pin. Next I spread some margarine on the dough. I thought about melting the margarine first but figured it would just melt when the buns were baked anyway! Then I made a mixture of three ingredients with these approximate measurements:

-3 tbsp. white sugar

-3 or 4 tbsp. brown sugar

-1 to 1.5 tsp. cinnamon

Then I evenly sprinkled this mixture over the margarine, and I also sprinkled a bit more cinnamon on after that. Next, I carefully rolled the dough along one of the longer edges (jelly roll style), trying to keep the dough tight as I rolled it. After it was rolled into a "log," I stretched it a bit more so that it was longer so that I could maximize the number of cinnamon buns it would make. Then I took a sharp knife and cut it into slices, with each being about 1 to 1.5 inches wide. I placed them into a greased 3-quart casserole dish and then baked at 375 degrees for about 23 - 25 minutes or so, until the tops were ever so lightly browned. I let the rolls cool before topping them with icing, which included these four ingredients (again, with approximate measurements):

-3/4 to 1 cup powdered sugar

-2 tbsp. skim milk

-1/2 to 3/4 tsp. vanilla

-a couple dashes of cinnamon

Voila! That is all. I'm going to bring them into work tomorrow to share with my coworkers. I am guessing they are best served warm, so we'll have to zap them in the microwave for a few seconds before consuming.... Can't wait for the ooey gooey delicious goodness!!