Calzones and Personal Pizzas

So for the past week, the thought of Calzones has gone in and out of my head. Due to Dave not feeling well, I unexpectantly got a day off yesterday from watching Sofia. Since I had the extra time and some cheese, sauce, and pepperoni in the fridge, I figured there's no better time than the present and decided to do some research.

I didn't want to use my CPK copy crust since I hadn't planned ahead and didn't have the time to let it rest properly. So my search began looking for a "quick" homemade pizza crust recipe. I came across a recipe on a blog that I follow from An American Housewife. Her pizza crust took about 2 hours which is some of the shortest times I have seen, plus she seems to really know her kitchen and food so I trust her recipes.

My calzone which was Mmm...Mmm...good

Anyway, I decided to give it a try, especially since she had a great idea....par cook the dough to create ready made pizza crusts for a quick and easy meal in the future. Oh my goodness, why didn't I ever think of that! And since Brad was gone for the night (and the following day), what a more perfect time to try it out!

The pizza crust was pretty easy to put together. I didn't take any pictures of it because I've made pizza so many times that it all kind of looks the same. The only things I did differently is 1) Allow the yeast to activate longer than she directed due to the yeast jar telling me otherwise and 2) Not waiting the full rising time..mainly because I was hungry ;o) Instead I just let it rise enough for the oven to heat up and then plus any time that the crusts waited while the others were baking. 3) Also, I didn't make them as "mini" as she probably did. I went more for the personal size but I'm sure if I would have let it rise more, I would have been able to make more pizzas out of it. Oh well, I'm not complaining!

As a side note: Brad has watched me upload these pictures and immediately got hungry and started asking "Why haven't you ever made me a calzone?!?!"

Homemade Mini Pizza Crusts
from An American Housewife

Pizza Dough

1 pkg. (2 1/4 t) dry active yeast
1 T sugar
1/2 t salt
1/4 c dry powdered milk
1 1/3 c warm water
2 T olive oil
4 c flour

• Put yeast, sugar, salt, dry powdered milk, and warm water into the bowl of a mixer or mix by hand. Wait 2 minutes  (I waited 10 per directions on my jar of yeast).
• Knead in olive oil and flour in a Kitchen Aid style (heavy duty) mixer 5 minutes or knead 10 minutes by hand. Let rest 10 minutes.
• Depending on the thickness of the pizza you like - Use in 1, 2 or 3 greased, average 'home' sized large pizza pans Let raise about 1 1/2 hours and top with your choice. Bake at 400 approximately 16-25 minutes depending the size of your pan and how many toppings you have on it. Bake until golden brown.
• To make the mini pizza's above - split the dough in half, then each in half again and continued dividing each piece in half again until I had 8 balls for a 1/2 inch thick crust. You could do up to 16 if you like very thin, crispy pizzas.
• Form each ball into a circle on a pizza stone and then baked at about 410 degree's for 10 minutes to pre-bake the thicker crusts - less if you make thin. Bake just until the bottom barely begins to get golden. You will finish baking when the pizzas are used in the future. Let cool and package for refrigeration or freezer. 

waiting to be packaged up

• To use, spread pizza sauce, toppings, cheese and bake at 410 until the top is melted and beinging to turn golden brown. (I baked mine at 350 in the toaster oven..)

And now for the Calzone...

I took the same dough that I used above, rolled it out and rolled a portion of it out into a rectangular shape. I then placed the sauce, cheese and pepperoni down the middle in a strip.

Using my bench scraper, I cut diagonal strips into the dough, thinking that I wanted to fancy my dinner up and criss cross the dough.

Now this is where I kind of "wung" it. I didn't really know what to do with the ends to I folded those in first and then did the criss crossing.

I kept the temp at 400 degrees and baked it for about 20 mins when it looked done and the top of the dough sounded a bit "hollow".

What have I been doing lately?

Not a whole lot of action over here this past month or so. Brad and I have been pretty busy for one reason or another and more often than not, not in Chicago and if we are, we're running from one place to another. Because of this, I have made a lot of the same things or at times, things that I'm wanting to tweak a little in the future.

Two of the bigger things I have done though are cakes. When I watch Sofia, I will often find myself watching some sort of cake show or another while she is napping. Well this got me itching to try out cake carving. Lucky for me, I have two birthdays coming up.

One for my brother-in-law's birthday (who happens to be a firefighter)

Ben and his birthday cake

I'm still working out the kinks in how to get the frosting super smooth when decorating in this manner

A little creative licensing to the back of the truck ;o)

I tried my best to model the truck after one of Oshtemo's engines to make it more true to life

And another for one of Brad's co-workers, a huge and forever a KU fan

She asked Brad if he could get her a KU cake being a recent grad and love for her alma mater

I made a four layer cake, then took the top layer and cut into it to make it into a type of "relief" cake

Rock Chalk...

Jayhawk!

K-U!