Foolproof Calzones For The Pizza Oven or Home Oven

Recipe: Calzone Recipe »

This 3 hour calzone recipe is puffy, golden, cheesy and totally customisable! Great for pizza parties in your pizza oven or home oven. These calzones get serious raves by everyone that tries them. I'll also show you some delicious savoury and sweet calzone fillings too!

About This Calzone Recipe

Calzones are a folded over pizza pocket made using pizza dough filled with pizza toppings. They were designed to be eaten on the go, like a portable pizza.

This calzone recipe is based on my 3 hour pizza recipe) that produces gorgeously puffy dough in a matter of hours rather than 3 days, which is a typical pizza dough! This is the one we always use for pizza parties. If you've mastered pizzas in your pizza ovens, a calzones is next!

What is normally in a calzone? Anything you can put on a pizza, you can put on a calzone. Having said that, the most popular calzone fillings are mozzarella or ricotta cheese, tomato base sauce and cured meats like salami.

What is the difference between cooking a pizza and calzone? Calzones are easier to make than pizzas! I wish I had known this before starting on making pizzas but oh well! Shaping a pizza is a bit tricky to get the perfect round shape but since a calzone is folded over, you can just fold it where you have an imperfection in the round shape. Also calzones are easier to lift onto the paddle because they are half the size!

Video How To Make A Calzone

Video: How to Make Calzones from scratch

Ingredients for Calzones

Pizza flour - I like using Caputo's Pizzeria flour.

Instant dried yeast - Make sure that your yeast is still in date. This is a slightly higher amount of yeast than a typical Neapolitan pizza recipe but we are looking for a quick rise for this dough.

White sugar - just regular white or caster/superfine sugar works.

Water - to ensure water is cold and around 18C/64F add ice cubes to water

Fine salt - Any sort of fine salt works (kosher salt is good too) for both the dough and tomato sauce.

Tomatoes - whole peeled tinned tomatoes by San Marzano if you can find them(or your favourite brand)

Tips For Making Calzones

1 - Begin making the dough around 3.5 hours before you want to eat it. The dough goes through two ferments: a bulk ferment and then an individual second ferment.

2 - This dough recipe makes 4 x 210g/7.4oz calzones and it can easily be doubled. Just divide the dough in 2 in step 2 when it comes to kneading it for 5-7 minutes unless you have a very large mixer that can fit the whole dough.

3 - Use lots of semolina flour when spreading out the dough. Fine semolina flour is great because it prevents the dough sticking but doesn't absorb into the dough.

4 - Calzones can be a bit trickier because the dough has tension to it because it is wrapped up whereas with pizza there is no tension as the dough is spread out. Try to ensure that the centre of the calzone dough isn't too thin as you don't want it to break. If anything, you want the edges to be thinner. Aim for around 22cm/8.6 inches in diameter. It's not a tragedy if there is a tiny hole in the top as this can vent the calzone.

5 - With toppings, slice them up like you would for pizza. The only difference is with the salami-slice this into strips for easy eating.

6 - For our savoury calzones we used 3 tablespoons of pizza sauce, 80g/2.8ozs of grated cheese as well as 50g/1.7ozs of salami and other fillings. For each calzone you can fill the calzone up a lot or a little. It's up to you! But I would recommend filling your first calzones less just until you get used to filling them up.

7 - For sweet calzones, use around 100g/3.5ozs of fruit and 150g-200g/5-7ozs of Nutella, Biscoff or pistachio paste.

8 - You can poke a tiny hole to vent to let steam escape although sometimes we'd forget and it was still fine. The dessert calzones needed a tiny vent.

9 - Calzones take around 2-3 minutes in our 380C/716F Gozney pizza oven. All pizza ovens are slightly different and Mr NQN watches them carefully and once they puff up and rise and are burnished on the top they are done.

10 - If you bake this calzone in a home oven, the maximum temperature is usually around 220C/440F fan forced. The calzone will take longer to bake at around 15 minutes. The filling will puff up and the top of the crust will brown when it is ready. Note: the pizza dough won't be quite as puffy as one cooked in a pizza oven because the super hot oven encourages the dough to puff up and rise.

Calzone Filling Ideas:

Meat: 3 tablespoons tomato sauce, 2 tablespoons ricotta, 50g/1.7ozs mozzarella, 50g/1.7ozs strips of salami, 6 pitted black olives, 2 tablespoons parmesan cheese.

Spicy Meat: 3 tablespoons tomato sauce, 80g/2.8ozs mozzarella, 50g/1.7ozs strips of spicy salami and pepperoni, 4 roasted cherry tomatoes, 1 teaspoon Muraca and 2 tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese. My favourite!

Vegetarian: 3 tablespoons tomato sauce, 80g/2.8ozs mozzarella, 4 tablespoons parmesan, 8 roasted cherry tomatoes, 1 teaspoon Muraca chilli. My favourite!

Vegetarian: 3 tablespoons tomato sauce, 80g/2.8ozs mozzarella, 2 sliced mushrooms, 6 strips of capsicum, 2 tablespoons finely sliced onion.

Vegan: 3 tablespoons tomato base, 4 slices vegan cheese, 2 sliced mushrooms, 2 tablespoons onion, 4 roasted cherry tomatoes, 30g/1oz seasoned tofu strips.

Sweet: 150g-200g/5-7ozs Nutella and 100g/3.5ozs sliced strawberries.

Sweet: 150g-200g/5-7ozs Biscoff spread and 1 sliced banana. My favourite!

Sweet: 150g-200g/5-7ozs Pistachio paste, 100g/3.5ozs total sliced strawberries and whole raspberries.

The kids also made their own vegetarian pizzas that turned out pretty well too and Tuulikki made a vegan one using vegan cheese. She loved it so much that she ate the entire thing and I've never seen her eat more than 2 mouthfuls of any food!

Calzone Recipe

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Calzone Recipe Overview

Preparation time: 30 minutes plus 3 hours rising time

Cooking time: 2-3 minutes in a pizza oven

Makes: 4 calzones

Ingredients Needed

Pizza Bases

• 500g/1.1lbs pizza flour (Caputo Cuoco or Pizzeria)
• 1.5 teaspoons/5g/0.2ozs instant dried yeast
• 8g/0.3ozs white sugar
• 318ml/11.2flozs water (around 18C/64F)
• 9g/0.31ozs fine salt

Pizza Sauce

• 200g/7ozs whole peeled San Marzano tinned tomatoes
• 4g/0.14ozs salt

Toppings

• Ricotta Cheese
• Mozzarella
• Salami or pepperoni strips
• Muraca chilli
• Pitted black olives
• Thinly sliced red onion
• Grated Parmesan cheese

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1 MIX - Mix flour, yeast and sugar together with a whisk in a large stand mixer bowl ensuring yeast is well distributed. Add water and stir with a spatula. It should be a shaggy textured mixture.

Step 2 KNEAD - Fit dough hook on mixer and mix on low speed for 2 minutes. Note: each batch of flour is different and if the mixture is too sticky, add a bit more flour within the first minute of kneading. You should be able to see whether it is too sticky at that time. Add salt and knead for 5-7 minutes until you get a window pane effect where you can stretch the dough apart for 2-3 inches and it becomes semi translucent but does not break.

Step 3 BULK RISE - Shape dough into a round ball with no cracks and place in the mixer bowl. Cover and allow to rise for 1 hour until double in volume. I place the bowls in larger bowls with hot water in them to give them a bit of a helping hand to rise.

From top to bottom: smoothing the top of the dough, cupping and rolling against the counter, no cracks on the bottom or anywhere on the dough

Step 4 SHAPE - Have the semolina flour ready along with 4 plates with 4 bowls that can cover each plate. Divide dough into 4 even sized balls 210g/7.4ozs each. Fold each dough ball over from north to south, turning each time so that it gets four folds. Then shape it into a ball by smoothing over the dough with both hands and stretching it down into a tight ball. Then cup it on a surface and turn it slightly while cupping it (see video for instructions). By the end you shouldn't have any cracks in the dough anywhere on the ball of dough. If there are any bubbles that pop up, prick them now.

Step 5 SECOND RISE - Sprinkle the plate generously all over with semolina flour and place the dough ball on this. Place a bowl on top that will completely enclose it. Repeat with the remaining dough balls and allow it to rise 2-3 hours - 2 hours if the temperature in your kitchen is above 22C/71.6F or 4 hours if it is cold below 20C/68F.

Step 6 PREHEAT - Half an hour before you are ready to cook your dough, preheat your pizza oven. Aim for 370C/698F.

Step 7 SPREAD - Once the pizza oven is almost ready, sprinkle more semolina flour on a benchtop surface and take your pizza dough and slide it off the plate gently keeping it as round as possible. Rotate the dough pressing it out with your hands into a large round, approximately 22cm/8.6 inches. You can make the edges a bit thinner too too but try to keep the centre of the round even and not thin as you won't want it to break.

From top to bottom: Meat calzone filling, pistchio paste with strawberries and raspberries, crunchy Biscoff and banana

Step 8 TOPPING - Place toppings on one side of the dough avoiding the edge. Start with the tomato sauce, then add cheese or fillings. Fold over the other side to make a semi circle of dough and press down to seal with your knuckles. Brush some semolina flour on a pizza peel and slide it onto the peel. Slide it into the preheated pizza oven and bake for 3-4 minutes. Allow to cool for 3-4 minutes before cutting into the calzone.

Substitution notes:

Any other pizza flour brand will work as long as it's a high protein pizza flour. Caputo has around 13g of protein per 100g which is good. You want between 12-14% to produce the elastic, chewy dough.

San Marzano tomatoes can be hard to find so sub with your favourite tinned tomatoes.

Personal Note

We love having pizza and calzone parties and we've had a couple of calzone parties. And at the first one we had Laura over. We were busy making gnocco fritto also trying out making calzones. They were a roaring success. Except for one thing.

We made one and it was utterly delicious. The cheese oozed out and we were all drooling as we cut it open.

Then we made another. I didn't have a pizza plate so I grabbed one quickly from the kitchen and ran out ready to catch the calzone.

I have a natural fear of being burnt so I held my hand out gingerly worried that Mr NQN might burn me with the pizza paddle. He really hasn't ever done this but I have childhood trauma from being burnt by my parents so it's a reflex.

The calzone slid off the plate and onto the ground. It all happened so quickly. Laura quickly picked it up and exclaimed "3 second rule!" out of Teddy and Milo's reach. Pizza fan Teddy would have loved to have had the whole pizza to himself and I'm sure he saw his life flash before his eyes as his dream came true. As for me, I was laughing so hard I almost peed!

So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever made pizza dough at home? Would you try a sweet calzone?