Sausage and Mozzarella Calzones with Homemade Pizza Crust

By - Tiffany King
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calzones-done

Oh, yeah.  These were good.  Meaty, cheesy and full of flavor.  I made them last week during the challenge to eat from the pantry and freezer.  I guess you could say they were inspired by ingredients I had on hand and a desire to eat calzones.

Here’s what you’ll need for the filling:

calzones-ingr

1 lb. sausage (or use ground beef)

1 onion, diced

1 garlic clove, minced

1 can tomato paste + 1 can water

basil, oregano, salt and pepper to taste

mozzarella cheese, the amount depends on how cheesy you like it.

Brown the sausage with the onion and garlic.  Drain the grease.  Add the other ingredients and combine them well, letting them heat together for a few minutes.

For the crust you’ll need:

calzones-pizza-crust-ingr

I found this recipe in a BJUPress 1st Grade Math book several years ago.  I altered the amounts a bit.  The amounts I list here will make 1 pizza crust.  For these calzones, I doubled it to get 2 crusts.

For 1 crust:

1 pkg dry yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp)

1 cup warm water

1 tsp. sugar

2 Tbs. oil

2 1/2 cups flour

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water.  Stir in the other ingredients (I used a stand mixer with a dough hook for this step.) Beat the ingredients until well mixed.  Let the dough rest 5 minutes. 

Now it’s time to assemble the calzones.  I decided to make 2 giant calzones instead of several smaller ones.  I did however make one mistake.  See if you can spot it in this picture.

calzones-assemble

Do you see my mistake yet?  I rolled out half of my dough (remember, I doubled the dough recipe) on the counter.  Spread half the meat mixture onto one side of the dough and add the cheese.  Fold the dough over the top and lift the whole thing up onto a baking stone or lightly greased cookie sheet.

Now, you know my mistake.  I would have taken a picture of it but I had dough, meat and cheese all over my hands.  Hot meat placed directly on unbaked dough creates a sticky mess.  Nearly impossible to lift onto a baking stone.  I did manage it, but it made for a pretty ugly calzone.  I was smarter with the next one.  I rolled the dough on the counter and transferred it to the baking sheet before filling it.

Bake at 425 degrees for about 25 minutes.  I’m guessing it might take a shorter amount of time if you make smaller calzones. 

These wouldn’t have won any beauty contests, but they tasted wonderul.  We had a whole one left for the next day’s lunch.  I just heated it in the oven.  It was crunchier than the night before, but every bit as wonderful.

calzones-done-whole

  • Wow. Saw you at SITS.

    The pics of this alone make my mouth water.

    I have everything but the yeast and the sausages. I would love to try it.

    Cheers.

    Reply

  • Mmmm yum! I make homemade pizza all the time, but I don’t know why I never do calzones. I might have to make a point of it soon. Thanks!

    Reply

  • That looks so delicious!
    I haven’t found a decent gluten free pizza dough recipe yet (and for that much flour, the gf substitute just doesn’t do it), but as soon as I do, I’m going to give this a try!

    Reply

    • NYC Mama, I’ve never tried to sub whole wheat flour. I think you might want to use whole wheat pastry flour to keep it from being too heavy. Let me know if you try. I’d like to know how it turns out.

      Reply

  • This looks great. I’ll leave out the meat and make it vegetarian. Love that you use GV products. I always use the GV mozz and tom paste.

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  • I usually make homemade calzones with store bought pizza crust. I will definitely be trying out this recipe for dough 😉

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  • Oh yum! The pics look wonderful, I’m drooling before 10 am here.
    p.s. I added you to my Twitter (dddiva) so that I don’t forget to keep coming back for more.

    Reply

  • Stopping by from SITS! This looks fantastic…my husband loves calzones and I’ve never tried making them! I can’t wait to try this recipe!!!!

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  • I love this! I’m such a huge fan of calzones, but have always thought it’s a little to complicated for me (well, to be fair, it’s the dough aspect of it. It’s too close to baking!).

    Thanks again!

    Reply

  • I make calzones and freeze them all the time. But when the girls were small, I had a stack (still do) of Tupperware’s individual hamburger patty containers. I would make little individual raw pizzas (uncooked dough with toppings) in them and stack and freeze them. The containers are flexible plastic so you can give them a quick twist and the little pizzas pop out ready to cook. One was just the right size for a small child. They became so popular that I bought a second set of the stack. Best part is you control what goes on top. You can also make your own dough which means you can use whole wheat flour….which is better for the kids.

    Reply

  • I swear the first thought that came into my head when I saw the pic was “holy crap, do those look good”. Not very eloquent, but heartfelt! lol

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  • My family would love these. We do homemade pizza every saturday, when I’m not pregnant and in the first trimester. Right now we are doing frozen pizzas for movie night. Oh well.

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  • Those look delicious! I tried making calzones the other day using leftover taco meat. I think they would have turned out but I used canned biscuit dough (because I had it on hand) and that wasn’t the right thing to use for the crust. Next time I’ll make pizza dough for the crust.

    Reply

  • I could definitely use a good pizza crust recipe-thanks! I think the sausage would be too spicy for our family though. Maybe some nice spinach and feta with tomatoes on top~yum!

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  • I made these tonight for company and they were SOOOO YUMMY!!! Thanks for an awesome easy recipe! I added a little bit of garlic powder and onion powder to my dough to give it a little kick and then made some different calzones with different ingredients for everybody… sausage, pepperoni, peppers, mushrooms, black olives… they were all yummy! Then I made a dipping sauce too! Definitely a keeper recipe!

    Reply

  • Why do my calzones not look like that? My family would love these with sausage, but I usually use pepperoni. We also use ricotta cheese, which adds to the leakage. 🙂

    Reply

    • Leslie, I actually used Bread Machine yeast, but it says it’s “ideal for all rapid rise recipes”, so maybe it’s the same thing.

      Reply
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