No, not the first I’ve eaten! The first I’ve made.
Now I don’t want to get into an argument over sauce vs. no-sauce. I like sauce. So I got a $1.29 bag of Trader Joe’s pizza dough out of the fridge. After resting it for a while I divided it in two. Ready for two calzones. I had some Ragu spaghetti sauce (which is weird, as I prefer Prego) after having used the pizza sauce on Friday. I put some of that onto each of the dough discs, followed by pepperoni, salami, ricotta cheese, and shredded mozzarella. Fold, seal, bake.
Lots of variance in what a calzone is. In the NYC - Philly corridor it was usually a lot of dough, a little cheese and maybe some meat. In the Philly area several places called a version with sauce and more fillings a Stromboli. Around here I run into these awful things where sauce, cheese, and meat are laid on a thin layer of dough, and then the thing is rolled or folded up and baked way too long.
Yours sound good, pretty much the way I make them, although I usually use my own dough, and if I use sauce, and I don’t make my own, I use some small brands that I’ve found better than the big name ones.
Breakfast today was the leftover half of my second attempt. This time I mixed parmesan, egg, and nutmeg with the ricotta. Other fillings were pepperoni, salami, provolone, meatballs, and the leftover sauce from last time.
So I was at Trader Joe’s the other day. They had chicken-and parmesan meatballs in the not-frozen section. ‘That sounds good!’ says I. I grabbed a package. Only when I went to make the calzone last night, I found that I’d grabbed ‘buffalo’ meatballs with blue cheese. That ain’t gonna work. So I opened a bag of Ikea Swedish meatballs that was in the freezer, and cooked them in the sauce.
The meatballs overpowered the pepperoni and salami. I’ve got to just make my own meatballs – but I haven’t had the time. I should probably make three pounds (2/3 beef-to-pork) of meatballs and freeze them so I can grab them when I need them. Also, use more pepperoni and fewer meatballs. Despite the meatball fiasco, the results were good.
I’m really liking the inexpensive pre-made dough. It’s so much more convenient than making my own! I think next time I may quarter it instead of halving it, and make four smaller calzones perhaps with different fillings. That way one of mine can have anchovies in it.
Not quite the same thing. A calzone is sealed all the way around, while a stromboli is rolled into a tube and open at the ends. Stromboli are also usually larger than calzones, though I’m not sure if that’s definitive: A stromboli is usually the size of a full pizza, while calzones are usually sized for individual servings.
Well as TriPolar was saying, in the Philly area if you add sauce and more fillings and seal it up just like a calzone they call it a Stromboli. I’ve seen rolled up stromboli too but in Eastern PA you’re likely to get something that’s externally indistinguishable from a calzone.
