CALZONE
18 may 2006

i'll be honest with you: i don't know what recipe to put here b/c i combined two different recipes & made the rest up, so secretly maybe it's all mine & i'll play it that way.

INGREDIENTS
refrigerated bread dough
1/2 cup to 1 cup marinara sauce
8 oz fresh mozzarella cheese
1/2 bell pepper, diced
1/4 white onion, diced
a couple mushrooms, sliced
black olives, sliced
olive oil

METHOD
preheat the oven to 375 F. dice the bell pepper & onion; sauté in a little olive oil. roll out the bread dough & divide in half. spread the marinara sauce on half the dough, then add the vegetables & the cheese (cut into quarter-sized chunks). fold the other half of the dough over the filling to form a half-moon. pinch the edges of the dough together using your fingers or a fork. using your fingers or a pastry brush, lightly coat the tops of the calzones with some oil. bake 20 minutes.

DEVIATIONS & OBSERVATIONS
the whole recipe was basically a deviation, b/c the calzone recipe i found called for smoked cheese, potato, & spinach. potato? no. i'm done with potatoes for a while, i think.

basically, my made-up recipe came down to a normal pizza, only folded in half. it tasted damn good, though.

the main problem we encountered was that, due to our hunger, we used a ready-made pizza crust in a can (pillsbury-style) & it came out as a huge rectangle, & when i tried to form my half into a circle (so i could have the traditional half-moon-shaped calzone), the dough wouldn't really roll out. it was super-stretchy & just snapped back no matter what i tried! very frustrating. & for the record, the calzone recipe i had DID call for pre-made bread dough, so it wasn't 100% laziness on my part.

anyway, you really can't go wrong with tomato sauce & cheese, you know?

"Calzone" from two different recipes in Vegetarian Classics: 300 Essential Recipes for Every Course and Every Meal by Jeanne Lemlin, © 2001.