One Hour Calzone Dough

 

Or pizza dough.  Either way, this One Hour Calzone Dough is supremely handy, great for nearly last minute meal planning, and works in other pizza-y related scenarios.

Oddly, or I'm sure this will sound quite odd anyway, I remember the first time I had a calzone.

Back in my theater days, I was a'-hustling my butt working several different shows at a time.  Generally five to six at any given moment.  Yeah, I was tired.

And not rolling in the cash either because if you've ever worked in theater, you know the pay generally sucks.  If you get paid at all.  Yes, professionally.

So it wasn't too often that I'd eat out.

One day I was working at Victory Gardens Theater when it was south of its current location and there was (wow, is still holy cow) a pizza place across the street.

 

The show was about to resume tech for the evening, I was likely circling hangry so I dashed over there.

 

As an aside, with the upheaval we've all witnessed in the last two years, things are finally evolving and there's a group dedicated to making theater work more equitable, safer, and with more manageable hours.  I hope they succeed in their mission.

 

Anywhoo.  Pizza, too much for one; salad, not today; pasta, too messy...what's this?  Calzone?  Uhh, ok, sure.

 

When I scurried back across the street to sit in the dark for the latter half of my day I dunno another six hours plus, I opened the box, cut a hunk off and thought to myself, whoa, why have I not had one of these before.

 

Everything pizza but tidy in its dough shell, piping hot with cheese and pepperoni and sauce...mmm, my tummy just growled.

Any time I was nearby, always hoping to catch a gig at VGT, I stopped in and got myself a calzone.

The thought never crossed my mind to make one from scratch.  Or, not until recently-ish anyway.

Mike is a pizza lover in almost the extreme; natural extension, bake up calzones.  So I did and he said he didn’t like them.  He didn’t like the one I made but he also said he didn’t like them at all.  Which, cuckoo, makes zero sense.

Time passed and I ran across a delicious sounding calzone recipe, scratched my chin and decided to try again.  Mike, I love him; he forgets, shall we say.

I needed a dough though so thought I’d give a recipe I found on Allrecipes a whirl despite personally being mostly unlucky on that site.

See, the Perfect Thin Crust Pizza Dough recipe does not work well here.  Always fascinating to me how some doughs work well for some things but not others.  Like this dough too.

But, obviously everything worked and I won Mike over (big time) because I am here with you today.

Now, according to the dough recipe original, you can use it immediately after kneading which I've never tried but I think it’s better to let it rise so hence, One Hour Calzone Dough.

It’s so simple.  You need a total of merely seventy five minutes for fresh dough, it’s a mixer or mixer-free gig, and a dependable nugget to add to your repertoire.

I personally prefer a mixer do the work so here’s how I do it:

In a mixer bowl, pour in some water and add the yeast.  I find that running the bowl under some warm water helps the entire process than dumping heated water into a cold bowl which drops its temp instantly.

Right, so sprinkle in the yeast, give it about five minutes or so but in the meantime, mix up a cup of flour with the oil, honey, salt, and more water, nice and smooth. 

You're sorta creating a type of starter though I can't figure what official name this one would have, if any.

When the yeast is ready, stir in the flour goo you just made then add a cup of flour to the bowl.  Whirl that around on low.

Sorry, winter light = bad light = bad photos.

When the first cup is mostly mixed in, add the second and whirl that whole thing around for about four minutes to knead.  It'll be soft and smooth and elastic and stick-free.

Kneaded.

Toss the dough in a greased bowl, let it rise an hour or until it's doubled then bam, good to go.

By the way, this dough is not terribly successful refrigerated for a slow rise, say, if your husband texts you last minute after you've made the dough and he wants to grill because spring is springing upending your plans, ya know, just FYI.

But otherwise, it's very handy, this One Hour Calzone Dough!  Next time I'll give you one way to use it.  In the meantime, here's Mike's Pizza Sauce!