Now as some of my family can tell you I can make a pretty awesome pizza roll. Usually it has pepperoni, cheese, veggies like onions and bell peppers, and sometimes spinach. Then I will put a good deal of garlic powder, italian seasoning, salt and pepper and wrap it all up using a canned pizza crust. I will have to make a post of it in the future.
Well, the thing that has bothered me about the pizza roll was that I was relying upon the canned pizza crust and that has two downfalls. First, what if I have all of the ingredients except for the pizza crust. Secondly, and more important to me, a lot of times when I pop open the can the crust will tear and it is a pain. So how wonderful would it be if I could make my own crust.
With this new recipe from Food For The Family it let me put together some of my favorite ingredients as well as make a pizza crust from scratch.
So here goes...
I pulled all of my ingredients out trying to be a good little organized cook.
Then of course I realized my mistake.
Her recipe calls for Active dry yeast and I only had the instant rising kind. Just so you know I have never used yeast before. I have seen it in the grocery store and longed for the day that I would make my own bread and it be the best thing anyone has put in their mouth, but until a couple of days ago I had never bought yeast. Truthfully I thought it was way out of my reach. I mean, they put it on the top shelf at the store for a reason.
So, now I have to wonder...what do I do? So I start reading the back of the package and it says you don't have to go through all of the steps that are called for in the recipe. That you can just add it in with the dry ingredients and keep on truckin. So that is what I did. Did it affect the end result....well, hopefully one of you more knowledgeable readers can help me answer that question.
Alright so I have all of the ingredients mixed together to form the dough but it is a lot runnier than it is on Food For The Family's pictures. So I kept adding flour and mixing until it got to the same consistency as her pictures.
Now here is another question for you more knowledgeable readers. The only all purpose flour I have in the house is the White Lily brand. White Lily is known to be great for biscuits because it is made out of only winter wheat and it is softer in texture. Should I use a different brand of flour for pizza crust or bread making in general?
Onward we go. I made the dough and let it sit in the warm oven for about 45 minutes, (I ran out of time), and I split it in to 4 seperate balls of dough.
I know this is not a nice, neat ball of dough but I am just figuring out how to take pictures with one hand and work with the other.
Then I roll it out into a circle.
Then I fill it with the chicken, spinach, green onions, tomatoes, and basil.
I add the alfredo sauce and I close it and crimp down the edges.
Now here I (kinda) diverted from the recipe again. Assuming that this was going to act like my pizza rolls of the past I decided to just put it in the oven to bake. That is what the recipe says but her pictures show her putting them on the grill.
I kept watching them to brown up a bit but for some reason they never did. I actually baked the first three together and left them in the oven for a total of 20 minutes. After 10 minutes I kept checking them every 2-3 minutes until I got tired of waiting.
Unfortunately when I pulled them out of the oven and tested them the outside was incredibly hard. The inside was nice and soft. The outside somehow reminded me of those cheap frozen pot pies where the outside of the crust never quite come together.
Since I had one last calzone left over I brushed the top of the calzone with olive oil and topped with a sprinkling of kosher salt and then threw it in the oven. I only left it in the oven for 10 minutes this time and even though the dough never browned at least the outside wasn't hard.
Even though it didn't come out as I wanted I will definitely try this again. I mean, come on, did you see those pictures. Yum!
Don't forget to check out the recipe. Those pictures are gorgeous. Food For the Family: Chicken Alfredo Calzones
Until next time,
~Michelle
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