Mmm.. Calzones. Calzones bring back lots of memories. I split a calzone for two on one of my first real dates. It was safer than splitting the spaghetti and risking a Lady and the Tramp moment. :) Calzones were one of the first dinners I made for Kevin after we got married, and probably the first meal I served for our first guest in our first apartment. Lots of first memories. :p I actually picked this recipe up in a speech class in college. We were to give a 5 min demonstration as we were speaking and one of the cute college boys demonstrated how to make these calzones. Unfortunately, he never made them for me, but luckily, I did come away with the recipe. I figured if they were easy enough for a college guy to make, I could definitely handle it. :p And so can you! :) This recipe is super quick and easy and very, very yummy. It makes enough for 3-4 people, or two very hungry college boys.

Calzones

1 can Pillsbury Refrigerated Pizza Dough
1 lb Italian sausage
1 pkg pepperonis
2 cups shredded cheese
Parmesan cheese
2 tbsp butter

Preheat oven to 375. Brown and drain sausage. Spray a rectangular baking sheet with Pam, and then roll out pizza dough thin and flat. Make layers of cheese, sausage and pepperoni on one half of dough, until desired amount. Fold the other half of the dough on top of the meat and cheese, and press edges together with a fork. Melt the butter and brush over the top of the calzone, then sprinkle parmesan cheese over it. Cook at 375 for 25 mins or until top is golden brown.

Here are the ingredients…

Alright now here’s the deal with the pizza dough. See how it says “Now with 33% MORE!!!” on the can?? Well, I’ve been making these calzones since before they gave us 33% more, and I liked it better when they were stingy with the dough. Before we had that extra 33%, it was the perfect amount of dough for calzones, now, unfortunately, I’m usually left a little too much dough. Well, 33% too much really. So if you can find a can that doesn’t have 33% more, get that one! :) But all I can ever find these days are the Super Sized 33% more can. :p It’s 13.8 oz, so, if I remember anything from 7th grade algebra, I think the smaller cans used to be 10.4 oz. But I had a huge crush on the boy who sat in front of me that year so I may be wrong. ;)

And another thing about the dough… I’ve shared this recipe with a few people so far and a few of them have come back to tell me that they hated the Pillsbury Pizza dough (it just didn’t work out for some reason or another) so they went to a local pizzeria and bought pizza dough from them. The results are unanimous. They LOVED it!! I really need to try that sometime. Or maybe find a really good homemade pizza dough recipe! As long as it doesn’t require a breadmaker. Anyone have one?? :)

Okay! Now that we have the dough taken care of… Wherever you got it from… Roll it out on a baking sheet. Or pan. This was actually the first time I used a bar pan to make calzones, usually I use a rectangular baking sheet. But I got this bar pan for Christmas so I thought I’d give it a try and see how it worked out. Plus this is the one that was on top of the pile of baking sheets, so I decided it must’ve been fate. Or laziness. Whatever.

Roll out the dough thin and flat. It cooks more evenly, plus I like a thin, crispy crust. :D

Now start adding the good stuff to one side of the calzone. I start with half of the sausage I browned. Be sure to leave about an inch all the way around for when you close up the calzone.

Then I add some cheese

And some pepperonis

And a little more cheese

Then the other half of the sausage

Then uh, yeah, more cheese

More pepperonis

And finally, the last of the cheese

Now grab the other half of the calzone

And fold it over

Smoosh the edges together real good.

This is where I decided I liked using the bar pan, cause even if I didn’t leave enough of an edge to smoosh the edges together good enough, the bar pan kept everything in place.

Now melt 2 tbsp of butter and brush it over the top of the calzone.

Then sprinkle with Parmesan cheese

Until it’s all nice and covered in buttery cheesiness.

Put it in the oven and bake at 375 for about 25 mins or until the top is golden brown. Like this:

Look at all that layered goodness

Now if you happen to have some pizza sauce on hand, which I did, leftover from the Bagel Bites, you can put some in a little bowl for dipping. I rinsed out the bowl I melted the butter in and used that. When the calzones had about 8 mins left to cook, I stuck the little bowl of pizza sauce in the oven with the calzones to let it get all nice and warm. When it came out, I sprinkled it with a little more Parmesan cheese. Yum. And tasty. And easy!!

And just like with the Bagel Bites, you can use any of your favorite pizza toppings you want. Mushrooms and Hamburger? Chicken and green peppers? Be sure and take a pic and email me if you experiment! :D

It just so happens that this is one of the first recipe scrapbook pages I ever made too. :)

*Note - I’ve experimented with the cooking temperature/times over the years, and have found that the one posted here in my blog works the best. So be sure and use that and not the one on the scrapbook page. :D