Saturday, May 26, 2007

Pizza Calzone

The boys have a friend staying over this weekend, they had the annual sports day yesterday at school (and Timo won a "fair play medal" yippeee!), so when they came home, sunkissed, tired, dirty and very much hyped up, I thought they were in for an easy, child friendly menu.

Decided to make pizza, to be more precise: Pizza Calzone! Fun to make, fun to bake and tomato streaked happy kids at the garden picknick table (do we have to use a knife and fork Mom?). And I made such lovely pictures of them, the dough, the pizzas....of which you can see a prime example at the top of this post. Right! My camera seriously died and forgot to give notice to it's owner.

For the dough I used a tried recipe which can also be found here. Stretched the dough on my hands to a 30cm circle and smeared a little tomato sauce on half of the circle, topped with ham, salami, hided some sauteed greens (leek, onion, bamboo shoots) under a layer of grated aged and mozzarella cheese, leaving a border. Folded the other half on top and sealed the rim by folding and pressing with my fingertips, thus making a pretty border, brushed the top with some olive oil.

Note: Some of you will immediately think of preparing a calzone on the peel/baking sheet.... I was painfully remembered when I stared at my first calzone, all ready, still on the silpat mat. That won't work folks! You can't move a fully dressed unbaked Pizza Calzone to your baking sheet without having some minor shape related injuries..... So one of them was slightly out of it's moon-shape.

And another one: like pita's you would like your calzone to puff and form a nice soft chewy dome. It will! The steam creates a nice dome anyway but it helps if the top layer (the one that folds over) is slightly thinner. The only thing is, I use to pre-bake my pizza dough for a couple of minutes and then top and bake off, to ensure a crisp bottom. As you'll understand this is not possible with a calzone, I baked 6 and two of them had a little bit of soggyness...haven't found a way to prevent that.

I am seriously pissed aggravated that there are no pictures! Really, they looked mighty fine. They did! They puffed. Dome. Melted cheese. Pah!

6 comments:

  1. That is a great photo of all the psyhic energy generated by those calzones! Why is it the universe decides to do things like that.
    Calzones sound like great backyard picnic fare!
    Congrats to Timo!

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  2. Lol I've had the same problem with calzone, mainly because my pizza stone has to be roasting hot when you put the pizza/calzone on it.

    It gives it a wonderfully crisp base, but you really need a board with semolina on it to help slide it onto the stone. Isn't it horrible when preparation makes a difference? I always feel cheated :-)

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  3. Karen,
    Your picture was great Art!! Spinning Calzone! Oh, I do love calzones and pizza. Here we had Pizza Hut delivered last night! Way to Go Timo! Eating in the back yard -- what fun!
    Sue

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  4. I 'm tickled by the concept of "serious" camera death. I believe, however, that your camera may be toying with you. Mine sometimes exhibits signs of defunctitude, only to return to a reasonably operational state. Don't toss it without another try!

    I'd love some of that pizza, and have no trouble imagining how it looks and tastes.

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  5. So the sil-pat mat is not the best thing to use?? I would think it would be much easier.
    Great post~ with or without the picture.

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