Monday, August 25, 2014

Meatball Calzone

A few weeks ago, I was looking through my refrigerator and freezer and trying to come up with a meal plan using items I had on hand.  I had a big bag of frozen meatballs in my freezer, and I thought about making meatball subs, but I didn't have any sub buns.  I decided to get creative and make something from scratch.  I looked around on Pinterest and found a recipe for Meatball Calzone.  I gave it a try, adapting it a bit for my family.
I used my mom's stromboli dough recipe for the bread part of the calzone.  The dough recipe makes enough for two calzones, so I put half of the dough into the freezer for a future meal, and used the other half to make the calzone.  I served this to my family, and after one bite, Jim told me he loved it!  This calzone is very simple, but really delicious.  Here's how I made it.

Meatball Calzone

Dough:
6 cups bread flour
1 Tbsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. salt
3 Tbsp. oil
2 1/4 cups warm water
1 Tbsp. rapid rise yeast

Filling:
8 precooked meatballs, sliced into thirds (I used thawed, frozen meatballs I bought at Sam's Club.)
1 cup mozzarella cheese

Topping:
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. garlic salt
1/2 tsp. oregano
1 cup spaghetti sauce

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Mix flour, salt, sugar, and yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer.  Add water and oil, and mix 5 to 7 minutes with the dough hook, adding additional flour as needed, until dough is smooth and pulling away cleanly from the sides of the mixer bowl.  Let rest for 10 minutes.
Spray a pizza stone with non-stick spray.  Place half of the dough on the prepared pizza stone and roll into a large circle with a rolling pin.  I rolled mine all the way to the edges.
Place meatball slices on half of the dough circle.  Cover the meatballs with cheese.
Take the plain half of the dough circle and pull it over the meatball and cheese half, lining up the edges of the dough and covering the bottom half completely.  Pinch the edges of the dough together.
Mix the olive oil, garlic powder, garlic salt, and oregano in a small bowl, and brush on top of the calzone.
Bake the calzone for about 20 minutes or until the top is lightly browned.
While the calzone is baking, heat the spaghetti sauce.  When the calzone is baked, cut it into strips or wedges.  Serve the sauce alongside the calzone or on top.
This meatball calzone is very tasty, and I hope you will give it a try soon!

2 comments:

becka said...

I'm going to have to try this! I'll use your mom's dough recipe. :)

Rob said...

Please do try it soon, Becka. Use Megan's mom's dough recipe for sure, and try not to adapt Meg's recipe too much. :-)