Italian hour! Calzone, Pizza, and Baked PastaNovember 16, 2009
We seem to really like Italian food. I think it’s one of my personal favorites to cook. It’s really fun, and relatively easy. Not to mention extremely rewarding!
This was my first try at making a calzone. It’s arguably not that different from making a pizza, but I do think it’s a tiny bit more difficult, and a tiny bit more fun! Maybe a little prettier too.
I made the crust with a very basic pizza dough recipe from my Granny’s old Betty Crocker cook book. The original recipe says you can use all purpose or whole wheat flour. And if you use self-rising flour, you omit the salt.
1 cup warm water
1 packet active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
Dissolve the yeast in the water and then add all other ingredients and combine.
For the sauce, I got a can of crushed tomatoes and added a whole bunch of dried seasonings to it. Pepper, salt, oregano, basil, thyme, and sage. I also added some cooking sherry. I let that cook for awhile to let it get happy.
I browned a pound of ground lamb italian sausage in a cast iron pan. I guess I should have drained that, lol. I bought shredded cheese at the grocery store. I got parmesan and 6 cheese italian.
I divided the dough into two equal parts and rolled them into circles. I rolled them on a floured surface of parchment paper. I put corn meal on my pizza peel (to facilitate sliding the finished product into the oven without it sticking) before I transfered the circles onto it. I then added the filling (sauce, 1/3rd pound of sausage, chesse) on one side and folded the empty section over and pinched the edges. Snip three vent holes in the top with scissors. I baked this in a 400 degree oven until it was golden brown. I think that took 10 to 15 minutes.
It was really good! We used the extra sauce for dipping.
This is a whole lot like my calzone entry, but it was so beautiful, it deserved it’s own post.
This is a whole wheat crust pizza. I had to fold over the crust edges like that because I made the dough circle too big for my pizza peel. It turned out a little like stuffed crust, so that was a happy by-product. This project is what made me dump bunches of corn meal on my pizza peel. I was getting very aggrivated with it sticking!
I made the crust with a very basic pizza dough recipe from my Granny’s old Betty Crocker cook book. The original recipe says you can use all purpose or whole wheat flour. And if you use self-rising flour, you omit the salt.
1 cup warm water
1 packet active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
Dissolve the yeast in the water and then add all other ingredients and combine.
The meat is pepperoni and hard salami.
I used shredded cheese from the grocery store. Some mozzarella, 6 cheese italian, and parmesan. My favorite brand of shredded cheese is Sargento. It’s a little pricey, but it’s often on sale at Homeland, and it’s the BEST next to blocks of fancy cheese. Not as much work, either.
I actually made the tomato sauce from scratch because we didn’t have any canned and we had some fresh that were going to go bad soon. I cut the tomatoes into quarters and put them in the food processor with some peperoncini peppers and a few garlic cloves and dumped the liquid into a sauce pot. I added some cooking sherry and bunches of dried herbs and spices (salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, sage, parsley) and cooked it down until it was thick enough to use.
This is one of our favorite dishes. We almost always overeat when I make this dish.
This is a fairly simple dish to make. Just whip up some marinara-ish sauce, boil pasta until it is al dente and brown some lamb (or other animal) italian sausage in a pan. I put the pasta in the bottom of a 4 1/2 quart casserole dish. I then pile on the meat and pour the sauce over the top. I cover the whole thing with lots of shredded italian cheeses, and throw it in the oven until the cheese is starting to brown.
I’m getting hungry just thinking about this!
— Ruth Henager
