Originally posted on October 30, 2005.

Being a huge fan of Italian food and pizza, I decided to make homemade calzones with Italian sausage, mozzarella cheese, and some herbs and veggies.

I used the pizza dough recipe I used in my “Tim’s Bitchin’ Pizza” recipe. And I also used organic ingredients where available, and things like fresh mozzarella and oregano.

Basic Instructions:

1. Make some pizza dough. (click here for my pizza dough recipe)
2. Divide ½ of pizza dough recipe into 4 equal pieces, then knead and form each chunk into a ball and let “rest” for 30 – 60 minutes.
3. Cut up and cook the Italian sausage until browned.
4. Chop the mince the other ingredients and produce.
5. Flatten out the dough balls and form into flat and thin pizzas.
6. Add some sauce and mozzarella, and add the ingredients, to the dough.
7. Close and crimp the edges well, and place onto a pizza stone in a preheated 475° – 500° oven.
8. Bake for 7 – 10 minutes, or until golden brown.

Now onto the pictures for the rest!

Our basic ingredients are pizza dough, Italian sausage, fresh mozzarella cheese, garlic, green pepper, mushrooms, fresh oregano, olive oil and some pizza or spaghetti sauce.

I had made a batch of my pizza dough the night before and let it rise in the refrigerator overnight for 18 hours or so..

After punching it down I cut the dough in half, then cut one half into 4 individual pieces. I kneaded each and formed them into balls. I then put a dish towel over them and let them rest for 30 minutes or so.

While the dough balls were resting I cut up the sausage and got it ready for cooking..

Note: Don’t forget to remove the skin off the sausage if you bought whole like I did. You can also buy ground Italian sausage too if you want..

The sausage needs to be cooked before using it. I cooked the sausage in some olive oil in a pan, then set it aside in a bowl to drain on some paper towels. It should also be cooled down some before using it in the filling.

Then while the cooked sausage was cooling off I chopped up the pepper and mushrooms, minced a couple of cloves of fresh garlic, and chopped the fresh oregano.

By now the dough had rested enough, so I formed each ball like a tiny flat pizza. I also lightly brushed on some olive oil, leaving a ½ inch dry around the edges so we can crimp it closed later..

Add some sauce to ½ of the dough, then some slices of the mozzarella cheese, and a little of each of the rest of your ingredients.. I added a little more sauce on top (not pictured, so you can see the ingredients) along with some more slices of the mozzarella before closing.

Then pull the other ½ of the dough over the top. Fold over the edges a little and crimp them closed good.

I had preheated the oven to around 475° – 500° and gave it a good 30 minutes to an hour to get the pizza stone good and hot. Then, using a pizza peel, slid the calzone off onto the hot pizza stone. I baked them 2 at a time for about 7 – 10 minutes until they were golden brown.

Note: Dusting your pizza peel lightly with some semolina flour (semolina is the kind of flour used in ravioli pasta) will help the calzone slide off easily onto the hot pizza stone.. Sticking is bad, mm’k.

And here are the finished calzones! The only thing I think I would have done differently would be to use about double the amount of mozzarella cheese, and a little more sauce.

Originally posted on June 3, 2004

Here are the ingredients, cost ($3.48 – $4.48 per pizza) and recipe for my first homemade pizza complete with nifty photos of most of the process too.. Woo?

Mixing Directions:

1. Pour warm water into large mixing bowl.
2. Add sugar and yeast to water, then stir until dissolved.
   Let sit for 10 minutes for yeast to mature (It will get foamy when ready).
3. Add salt and olive oil and stir again.
4. Add 1st cup flour and whisk it in. Do the same with the 2nd cup of flour.
5. Add 3rd cup of flour and combine (whisk probably won’t work now, I used a spoon).
6. Then add final 4th cup of flour and mix it in by hand, begin to kneed dough.
7. Add dusting flour as needed while you kneed dough for another 5-10 minutes or so.
8. Once dough no longer sticks to your hands lightly coat dough ball with olive oil and place into a lightly oiled mixing bowl.
9. Cover bowl with plastic wrap or foil and set aside to rise for 60-75 minutes (I let mine rise for 75 minutes).

After the mixing and kneading of the ingredients I balled up the dough, put a little olive oil on the dough ball, and put it in a lightly oiled bowl. Then covered it and let it rise for an hour.

After about an hour and 15 minutes covered in the unlit oven the dough had risen a bunch, it was over twice as big, d’oh..

Note: Make sure the dough is at least twice the volume it was. If it takes two hours so be it, don’t get anxious!

Then I punched down (deflated) the dough, dumped it out and cut it in two pieces. (This recipe makes two crusts)

After cutting the dough in two chunks I kneaded them a little more and balled them up again.

One dough ball I lightly covered in olive oil and placed in a zip lock freezer bag for later use (I later found out the bag was way too small and the dough rose more and broke it, use a larger freezer bag than the one pictured!). The other I placed back in the bowl for 15 more minutes to rest and “proof.”

Then I worked the dough ball on a lightly floured cutting board, flattened it out, and even tossed it a little over my knuckles to spread it out, woo. You could also just roll it out with a rolling pin too, it’s just less fun that way.. It should be fairly thin at this point, maybe 1/8 of an inch thick or so. Basically it fit my 14″ pizza pan when done.

Note: You can see the gluten proteins have made it “stretchy” (if you’ve done everything right so far), and the dough is stretchy and somewhat elastic. It should not break or tear easily if you decide to toss it around a little over your knuckles.

Now we’re ready for the other ingredients like pizza sauce, pepperoni and mozzarella cheese.

Update: I’ve finally gotten around to putting up a recipe for simple pizza sauce from scratch using whole tomatoes. Check it out here!

I placed my dough on my pizza pan, slapped on some pizza sauce and spread it around..

Note: I’ve heard nothing but good things about using a “pizza stone” (see right column link), and plan to buy one in the future and try it. But to be economical I’ve only bought a plain ‘ol pizza pan for now.

Update: Soon after making this first pizza I bought a baking stone. After four years I would never bake bread again without one!

Then I added a light layer of the mozzarella cheese..

Then sprinkled on a tiny bit of garlic salt and parmesan cheese, added lots of pepperoni, and topped it off with a bunch more mozzarella cheese.

I had preheated the oven to 450° F and then baked the pizza on the middle rack for a little over ten minutes or so.

Update: Hotter is better! Go for 500° (and less time) if your oven will do it. I do.

And there’s the finished pizza cut up and ready to chow down on. mMmm. Check out how the mozzarella cheese is stringy and stretches from the pan to the plate. Woo?

Other Translations!
I noticed a while back that others have translated the recipe into Arabic on the following sites. I kinda wish they would have posted a link back to my site and given the proper credit though.

http://www.14noor.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=90058

http://www.arabseyes.com/vb/showthread.php?t=11485