Strombolis

This is the story of yesterday's dinner.  I had a bag of frozen pizza dough but did not quite want pizza.  It is a weird feeling but there it is.  Hubby kept saying make pizza.  A stroke of genius struck.  Why not try making a stromboli?  All it is is rolled up pizza.  Can't be too difficult, can it?  So here it is...

Stromboli

Ingredients:

Pizza dough
flour, for dusting
1 ball mozzarella cheese, sliced
1 cup filling, of each pepperoni, sausage, ham, olives, onions, whatever
olive oil, for brushing
sauce, for dipping

Steps:

1. Prep all filling ingredients.
2. Dust surface with flour and transfer dough to surface. Cut dough in half.
3. Roll out the dough into a rectangular shape - around 11 by 14 inches. The dough should be about 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch thick. Do this for both pieces of dough.
4. Cover the dough rectangle with your cheese and then your fillings. Make sure to leave a 1 inch border on all sides.
5. Evenly roll the stromboli from bottom to top. Pinch the seam tightly with closed fingers. Pinch the two ends closed and tuck them under the loaf. Carefully lift the loaf and place them seam side down on a parchment lined baking sheet. Brush the loaves with olive oil and cover the pan with plastic wrap.
6. Let the stromboli sit for 1 1/2 hours. The dough will be showing signs of wanting to rise.
7. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Brush the dough with olive oil and lightly sprinkle with salt. Cut 3 or 4 steam vents in each stromboli to release any air. Bake 20 - 30 minutes until crust turns golden. Rotate the pan after the first 10 minutes for even baking. Let cool for 5 minutes before serving.

The final product:

This recipe made two strombolis and perfect dinner size for the hubby and I.  As you can see I had a bit of seep-age occur.  I think that was because I cut really big vent slices.  I won't do that again.  I ended up leaving them in the oven for 25 minutes but next time I think it will stay in the oven the full 30 minutes.  It was a bit work intensive to roll out the dough but cold dough is easier to work with compared to fresh warm dough.

As for taste, totally yummy!  I used the mozzarella cheese, leftover meaty spaghetti sauce, and some pepperoni.  But really I think you could put almost anything inside - I thought it might be interesting to do one with cheese, pesto sauce, and cooked shredded chicken.  Maybe next time.

As for the pizza dough, I make a fresh batch following the instructions in My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method.

The batch produces dough for two pizzas - which I freeze.  So this dough would produce about 4 adult sized strombolis. One could probably go a bit smaller in size and make a bunch from one batch - somewhat like Hot Pocket sized.  Probably a bit healthier than a Hot Pocket though.

Enjoy!