Sunday Dinner: Calzones
Forgive the truly awful pictures and the fact that there are almost no pictures. This is what I get for doing this so late.
The original plan for today was to make chili con carne and the first recipe for my one bowl baking project, cornbread. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to get enough cornmeal for the muffins, so I turned to something else I had wanted to make for a long time: calzones! I only realized all this fairly late, so dinner was going to be late, though we've definitely eaten later.
First step was pulling out a dough recipe. I went with Cook's Illustrated for their calzone recipe. I ignored the filling but I did follow their instructions for the dough.
So the dough started rising around 7pm, and would need at least an hour and a half before I could start even thinking about eating. After that, it was time to divide up the dough into balls, let it rest a further 15 minutes and prepare the ingredients I was going to be shoving in them. Both would get some ricotta and mozzarella cheese but for Mark, my long time partner, it was going to be mushrooms and ham. I was going for ham and chorizo. Basically, what we put on our homemade pizza. Maybe next time I'll be more adventurous with the filling, but I just really wanted to be sure it was something we'd like for my first time messing with dough.
Anyway, I filled them up with tasty filling, nearly forgot to cut any vents into the top and then promptly forgot to brush olive oil over either of them. So, maybe next time olive oil and possibly some extra seasoning will be brushed over the calzones. They went into the oven for 11 minutes, the oven which had my pizza stone in it and had been preheating since I started on the dough, and came out when they were golden.
They were delicious and filling, for all their flaws. The upside to making dinner so late is that by the time it's done the bar for "yummy" is lower because you're so hungry. I had some tomato sauce on the side. The picture above was taken after I had already cut off a bite of my calzone, which is why it's rather awkward and dark.
Thoughts for the next time: remember the olive oil. Also, don't start it at 7pm if I want to take pictures.
The original plan for today was to make chili con carne and the first recipe for my one bowl baking project, cornbread. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to get enough cornmeal for the muffins, so I turned to something else I had wanted to make for a long time: calzones! I only realized all this fairly late, so dinner was going to be late, though we've definitely eaten later.
First step was pulling out a dough recipe. I went with Cook's Illustrated for their calzone recipe. I ignored the filling but I did follow their instructions for the dough.
So the dough started rising around 7pm, and would need at least an hour and a half before I could start even thinking about eating. After that, it was time to divide up the dough into balls, let it rest a further 15 minutes and prepare the ingredients I was going to be shoving in them. Both would get some ricotta and mozzarella cheese but for Mark, my long time partner, it was going to be mushrooms and ham. I was going for ham and chorizo. Basically, what we put on our homemade pizza. Maybe next time I'll be more adventurous with the filling, but I just really wanted to be sure it was something we'd like for my first time messing with dough.
| Behold, the badly photographed end result! |
Thoughts for the next time: remember the olive oil. Also, don't start it at 7pm if I want to take pictures.
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