Calzones

3 Tablespoons active dry yeast

3 cups warm water
3 Tablespoons sugar

Dissolve yeast and sugar in warm water in a stand mixer using dough hooks (Bosch or KitchenAid).
When you see action and yeast has bubbled then...

Add:
2 Tablespoons honey
6 Tablespoons oil
1 Tablespoon salt
3 cups flour (plus additional flour, up to 3 cups)

After you have stirred in honey, oil, and salt, add 3 cups flour (pluse additional flour if necessary) and beat until smooth, 5 minutes.
Mix in enough flour to make dough easy to handle and watch to see it begin to pull away from sides.  When dough starts to pull away from bowl and you hear your mixer gear down, you are ready.

Place in a greased bowl then rotate greased side up. Cover and let rise until double in bulk, about 30 minutes.  Punch dough down, then let rise again for another 30 minutes to make a light and fluffy dough.


dough rolled out

Prepare dough:
Punch down dough and divide into 8-10 equal parts.
Place on a lightly floured surface.
Roll each part into a 7" circle.

On one half of the dough place:
Toppings of your choice:



yummy example

Here's an example:
1 can tomato sauce mixed with 1 Tablespoon Shirley J pizza seasoning
mozarella cheese
peppers
ham
pineapple
olives
Fold empty half over top of toppings.  Pinch edges to seal.

Place calzones on cookie sheet sprayed with Pam.



ready for egg wash

Brush calzones with egg wash.
(egg wash is an egg beaten in a small bowl)
A neighbor just called to say that without a pastry
brush the egg wash is impossible to place. So do
get one of these handy tools.



ready to eat



Let dough rest for 15 minutes.
Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes.



This will make 8-10 big calzones.

The original recipe is from Laura Sparks from the good ol' Idaho cookbook.  I have tripled the recipe as it never makes enough for our family of six.  We just had these for our special Valentines dinner tonight. I usually make extra and freeze for later occasions. This is a family favorite.

I basically just added honey to her recipe.  Her original is for 4 calzones and looks like this.

1 pkg. dry yeast

1 cup warm water

1 Tablespoon sugar

2 Tablespoons oil

1 tsp. salt

2 3/4 cup flour to 3 1/4 cup flour.

Putting in too much flour will make your Calzones tough and hard to work with.  I put the three cups of flour in the mixer, then add flour until I see it pull away from the sides and start to look like dough.  I do not measure this but I make sure it is not more than an additional three cups, if that makes sense.  It's usually one to two cups.

Calzones are  a lot of work.  If I were making them tonight, I would start my dough at 3:00 p.m.  Punch down twice and by 4:00 I am ready to start rolling out dough and getting them ready.  They rest for 15 minutes on the cookie sheet and I'm usually ready to start baking at 5:00p.m.  They do take time, but I think they are worth it.