How To Cook Wood Fired Calzone

There is nothing like a great calzone and you can make it any way you like! The secret is not to cook too hot even though you are working with wood! The reason being is that the dough will be cooked before the middle is cooked so I like to cook with a warm oven and a small fire. Try not to make them too high spread the ingredients out so they cook!

Another tip: I like to put extra flour on the outside of the calzone. It protects it from the heat.  then I brush it off when the calzone is done and have a real crispy dough!

Ingredients like cured meats, vegetables, and herbs can be used in calzones,  Calzones always use ricotta cheese as the base and some mozzarella. You can season the ricotta cheese with some parsley. salt, pepper, and garlic as well.  I do recommend the extra flavor.

And then there’s the sauce. Calzones never have tomato sauce inside the dough.  But I like to add a little bit on top when I cook mine. Seeing this done in Italy when I visited a great pizza place in Verona   It was just perfect and I continued that tradition at home.  If not you can dip them in your own marinara sauce and enjoy a great treat with the family.  So Love Life and Learn to Cook The Perfect Calzones.

Video Transcription

So today we’re going to do a nice calzone with spinach, ricotta cheese, roasted peppers, and mozzarella. You’re going to love this cooked in a wood-fired oven. So the first thing we’re going to do is take our dough and we’re going to make sure that it’s stretched out nice. You don’t need a crust on it when you’re making a calzone. You want to just flatten it out, make it nice and thin. This is going to be a nice sized calzone. We’re using actually a 10 ounce dough ball here, so that works and that’ll be really good.

We got to mix this ricotta cheese and then we’re going to put a little bit of parsley in there, salt, pepper, and we’re going to put one egg yolk, all right? That keeps it nice and binded and makes it nice and tight when you cook it and that’s really a good thing to do. That recipe will be posted up on the blog. So check this out. That looks good. Baby spinach is the best thing to use if you’re going to do this. So you can take a little bit of baby spinach, all right, and put this right inside. Then I’m going to take a little bit of mozzarella, shredded, very nice.

Then we’re going to put a little bit of roasted pepper. These are wood-fired peppers. They’re not from the jar. Just roast them in your oven, make it really nice. They got good flavor. You won’t get that vinegar from the jar if you roast them yourself. You don’t want to make it too, too thick. But whatever feed the family, so let’s do it nice. Then we’re going to add a little more cheese, okay? Nice base of cheese. Then we’re going to add some Asiago to this because Asiago shredded is absolutely amazing. That’s looking good. Now, you know what? Let’s put a little more cheese. Might as well get the cheese going. This is going to be a nice, big calzone.

Then we fold over the dough on top. You want to make sure that you seal it really, really well. Okay. So press down on your edges. Seal it really good, you’ll have no problems. Seal it up really nice. Make sure that’s good. Keep doing that. You don’t want it to leak. You can just trim your edge a little bit if you like to make it look nice. You can put a hole in the center, some people do, or you could put some small cuts. I like to put a little flour on it again. It protects the calzone.

If your oven’s real hot, you’re going to have a tendency to burn the outside. So I’m going to put a little flour on it. Then when I’m done, you can just brush it right off and it will come out just beautiful and protected. It’s nice. Some people put a hole in the middle. You can. But being that it’s a wood-fired oven, I want to get a little more heat inside. I want to make sure that we’re really cooking, so I’m just going to put a slice down the middle like this, make sure she’s open. Then I’ll add one over here, make sure she’s open. I’m going to add one on here.

Now when I see that boiling, I’ll know that we’re good to go. Okay. Now we’re going to go in the oven. We’re always going to turn it this way so it comes off real easy. Make sure [inaudible 00:03:28] the seal. We’ll go right for the wood-fired oven. We’re going to get cooking. Sounds good.

All right. So the oven is burning away. I don’t have it too hot. The fire is not too big. You want to protect the calzone from superheat in this case. My floor was 450 degrees. I just tempted with a gun. So the fire is small, nice fire. I got lots of room in this oven so it’s okay. I’m going to cook this away from the fire and make sure that I don’t rip it when I move it as well. Just going to throw it. It’s nice and simple. I’m going to give that about two minutes and then give it a move.

All right. So she’s cooking away really nicely. It looks good. The birds are you coming to get us. They’re getting hungry. I’m going to to check it out and you want to make sure you don’t rip the calzone. See, she’s cooking nicely, the bottom as well, and that’s okay. I’m just going to to let it sit in a new spot, a little turn.

All right. She’s been cooking about five or six minutes, nice and slow. See how the flour’s protecting it actually. The dough is really cooking. It’s very hard. But the flower will come right off, so that’s pretty cool. We’ll just brush that away right before we bring it out like that. So we know it’s done when we see it starting to bubble and boil everywhere and the outside really hard and really crunchy. So you don’t want to get too hot. You just want to make sure that, listen to this, okay? Super dough. I’m going to take that out. It looks really good.

We’ll let that set up. It’s like a great steak. It’s like a great steak, right? We’ll let that set up for a minute or two and finish cooking it on its own. It’s going to be beautiful. All right. Now look at that. The dough is really firm, super crispy and it’s looking good. All right. The bottom’s cooked. See that? You want to take off your flour like I said you can. Just let that sit for a minute before you cut it. This is going to be absolutely incredible. Great Sunday afternoon calzone.

All right. Let’s listen to this crunch. Look at that dough, cooked nice and slow. Flour protects it. When you give it a cut, you can actually hear it. Wow. It’s looks really beautiful. Oh my goodness. Look at that. Looking good, right guys? The dough is cooked inside. See the bubbles, that means you know it’s done. Cheese is melted, you know it’s hot. Then you can cut that up, have a beautiful lunch with the family. All right. And you can enjoy life.