Honestly, there are three ways you can make calzone (and pizza, for that matter) distinct, in my opinion: the crust, the sauce, and the pre-cooked filling. In the interest of full disclosure, I do have to cop to having used jarred spaghetti sauce time around, mainly because part of why I picked this food to make was I needed a new way to use up the rest of our jarred sauce. Sorry to all you purists out there!
For this experiment, I went with a fairly simple flour crust. There are a couple variations you could use that make for some tasty treats as well, and I'll mention them at the end here. Start off with 1 package of dry active yeast, 1 Tablespoon of sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1.5 cups of warm water (the package recommends about 100F... I just brought it to a simmer in a pan and let it rest a minute). Let the mixture rest for five to ten minutes; you should end up with a somewhat frothy concoction. Add it to 1.5 cups of flour and begin kneading the dough, working on a well-floured surface. Keep an extra half-cup to a cup of flour on hand to slowly add to the dough, working it in slowly. For these calzones, I also tossed in about an eighth of a cup of dried oregano, and a quarter cup of corn flour. This gives the dough a more crusty texture once baked, and tastes pretty nice as well. Roll your dough until you get one sizable ball, put in a bowl, and let rest in the fridge so that the yeast will mature.
At this point, you'll have plenty of time to start getting together your fillings. Ricotta, fresh mozzarella and sauce form the base of all the calzones, a fairly sweet and mild flavor overall, so from there you want to generally go with savory and spicy flavors. In one I'd already decided to do pancetta and garlic mushrooms. As always, start with a hot pan, olive oil, salt and
For my second calzone, I decided to go with something a bit more classic: italian sausage. Because my brother-in-law has something of a sensitive palette, I opted to go with mild and then add crushed red pepper sparingly. Simply brown and drain.
For the third and final calzone, I wanted to do a taste less sharp than the other two, and decided to boil some shrimp in water with garlic salt, a single dried bay leaf, and some paprika. I planned to serve it up on top of a some fresh basil leaves.
I thought I'd play it smart and top each calzone with a little piece of what was inside as well, in order to make life easier for myself later on.
