Hi everyone! As you may have guess from the title, I made Italian food for dinner this week…again. I seem to be making a lot of Italian food lately. I guess it might have something to do with my Italian heritage…maybe. 
Anyway, for dinner this week I decided to make calzone. I’d never tried making it before, so I figured now was as good a time as any to learn! I used a recipe from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katsen.
To make the dough:
1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
1 cup lukewarm water
2 tsp honey
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
3 Tbs olive oil
First, mix together the yeast, water and honey in a large bowl. Stir and then let it sit for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes has passed, beat in salt and flours (I should note at this point that I only had white flour in the kitchen, so I just used 3 cups of white and it turned out fine). Use a wooden spoon until it is too thick to mix, and then turn it out onto a floured surface and knead for 8 to 10 minutes, or until smooth. Grease the mixing bowl with olive oil, return the dough to the bowl and brush the top of the dough with oil. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size (about an hour). After the dough has risen, punch it down and turn it out onto a floured surface. Divide it into 6 equal parts and knead each part into a ball. Roll each ball out into a circle that is about 1/8″ thick. equally divide the filling among the 6 circles, placing the filling on one side of the circle. Bring the other side of the dough over the top of the filling and seal the edges with water and the flat edge of a fork. Prick with a fork and put on baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes at 450 degrees.
Now for the filling! There were several fillings in the cookbook to choose from, but I decided on the pesto filling. It is very simple, just mix 1 cup of pesto with 2 cups ricotta. After I mixed up the two ingredients, I tasted the filling and I felt like something was missing. I had some mozzarella in the refrigerator, so I threw that in and I also added some garlic (I usually add extra garlic to things…this may or may not be a good thing). I was talking to my mom before I made this, and she gave me a good tip. When using ricotta as a filling for calzone, it is a good idea to get some of the excess liquid out, otherwise the filling gets runny and gross and, well, no one wants that. So, to drain the ricotta, just line a colander with paper towels and put the ricotta on top, then cover the cheese with more paper towels and push down lightly on the cheese so that all the excess moisture will come out. Once I mixed up the ricotta and the pesto I noticed that, despite my cheese draining efforts, the mixture was very soupy. To firm up the filling a bit, I whisked an egg and added it to the mixture. This helped the cheese to become more firm once it was baked.
The calzone turned out very well, and it was very easy! The crust took a little time, but that was only due to the kneading and rising time. Otherwise, it was a very simple dinner.I apologize for the picture. I forgot to take a picture of the calzone before we started eating, so the picture is of a calzone cut in half…not the best picture, but you can get the general idea 
Happy Cooking!
~Cassie