Calzone

Hello Everybody!!!!!!! ☺ ☺ ☺

I hope you all are liking the recipes I've been posting so far! ever since I started this blog, I just look forward to the weekend to try out new recipes! ☺ And my family loves my enthusiasm because they get to eat dishes they've never heard of!

I bravely ventured into Yeast-baking once again. Even though my first experiment, the Garlic Pull Apart Rolls was successful, I was a little nervous about the Calzone. When you use yeast, the dough tends to stretch a bit. And with all the yummy veggies & cheese & sauce I was going to stuff inside, I wasn't sure if the dough would tear or not. If I had a Calzone maker, I wouldn't have been so tensed! ☻ I've written it down on my wishlist. Check out to your left for a cheap mould.

Let us make Calzones...


Ingredients
for the dough - 
All purpose flour / Maida - 250 grams
Wheat flour - 50 grams (optional. you skip this & use Maida flour itself)
Dry Yeast - 2 & 1/2 teaspoons
Sugar - 1 teaspoon
Salt - to taste (1.5 teaspoon)
Olive Oil - 1 tablespoon (if not available, use any other cooking oil)

for the filling - 
*the following veggies are what I used for making the Calzone. You can use any vegetable of your choice. If you have left-overs, use that. You can even stuff it with meat, chicken etc. But we stick to vegetarian! ☻ *
Onion - 2 medium sized (finely chopped)
Capsicum - 1 large (remove seeds; chop finely)
Tomato - 2 large (finely chopped)
Carrot - 1 carrot (finely grated)
Baby Corn - 2 small (cut into small flowers)
Beans - very few (I used around 3 beans because we aren't big fans of beans)
Green Chilli - 3- 4 (finely chopped)

for garnish - 
Pizza Cheese (Mozzarella) - grated
Dry Oregano Powder - readily available in the market
Red Chilli Flakes - put 5- 6 dried red chillies into a blender/mixer along with some salt & make it into a powder. (also available in the market readily)
Pepper Powder (optional)
Salt - to taste


Method
for the dough -
1. Take a cup of warm water & dissolve the sugar in it. Now add the yeast & stir for a minute or 2. Let it rest for 5 minutes

2. In a mixing bowl, add the flour, salt & oil & mix it thoroughly with a fork. Slowly add the Yeast water to the flour & keep mixing it. With your hands, knead the flour for about 10 minutes to make it into a smooth dough.

 

 3. Cover the dough with a damp cloth & let it rest for 45minutes- 1 hour. You'll notice that the yeast works its magic! The dough rises to almost double its initial size! ☺

 

for the filling-
You can do 2 things -
* Either make the Calzone & fill it with the veggies one by one; OR
* Lightly stir fry all the veggies & mix with some Pizza Sauce & then stuff it in the Calzone

To make the Calzone-

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degree C

2. Divide the pizza dough into 4 equal portions. Keep aside under a wet cloth.

3. Roll out each portion of the dough into a 6 inch diameter circle. (or any size you want)

4. Apply the Pizza Sauce on one side of the dough & put one portion of the filling on each circle. Top it with oregano, chilli flakes & grated cheese

5. Fold each circle to form a semicircle.

6. Seal the ends using a little water and press the edges firmly with the help of a fork.

7. Grease a baking pan & place the Calzone on it. 

8. Apply ample butter all over the Calzone.

9. Bake at 200 degree C for 20 minutes or until the toothpick insert comes out clean. Cut them into slices.

 

10. Apply more butter on top & serve hot with ketchup! ☺ ☻

Verdict: I still have to perfect my yeast baking. Taste-wise, it was really good. Even the bread came out really soft. But the shape came out just okay. One mistake that I made was to fill it with too much veggies. While I tried to make it into a semi-circle, some places started tearing. So avoid dumping to much in. Just fill the veggies in the center of the dough. If you use egg to grease the Calzone, t would come out brown. I used butter. Hence, the outcome was a white Calzone. I don't know when I'll be making the next Calzone. But next time, I'm gonna focus on making them look great! ☻