Earlier last week I experienced a situation that happens fairly regularly when you write a sandwich blog. I had extra ingredients left over from a couple of different sandwich projects and I needed to find another use for them. I had a surplus of ham, a bunch of extra cheese, and some homemade honey mustard. I needed a plan to use these leftover ingredients and some serious thinking led me to the non-low-cal calzone zone.
What is a calzone?
First off, it’s not a sandwich. But a calzone contains fillings stuffed between dough, and you can pick it up and eat it—so I’m writing about it. Until last week, I’d certainly eaten a calzone, I’ve even made them several times, but I never even thought about the history.
I was a little surprised to learn that the calzone is an Italian invention. I had incorrectly assumed they were created someplace like Queens, New York but they date back to the 1700s in Naples, Italy. The word calzone is Italian and translated to English it means “stocking,” “trouser,” or “pants leg” because they were originally invented as “walking around” food that could be eaten on the go.
Calzoni
The plural of calzone is calzoni. The word calzoni also translates to pants. This isn’t important to your or my day-to-day life, but I do use the word calzoni a few times in this blog post and I don’t want you to think I’m crazy.
There is another similarly dough-wrapped Italian dish called stromboli that is an American invention. Stromboli are fairly similar to calzoni and for a long time, I was confused about which one was which. They’re both made with fillings that are stuffed and baked inside of pizza dough but stromboli more often than not has the sauce inside the bread pocket while a calzone might be served with sauce on the side for dipping or spooning on top of bites.
Once you know that sauce is the big difference between the two you can remember that stromboli begins with the letter S and the word sauce begins with an S and that can help you know which one is which.
Is a Hot Pocket a calzone, a stromboli, or a Pop Tart?
While digging around the internet for calzone content to write about here, I found a product image for Hot Pockets Calzone and it made me really question everything I already knew about Hot Pockets and Calzones.
Hot Pockets already has a Pepperoni Pizza version which has pepperoni, cheese, and pizza sauce inside, which I guess would make that version a Stromboli? But the Hot Pockets brand also makes a ham and cheese version that is sauceless so that can’t be a stromboli, can it?
None of this gets us any closer to the truth though. Is a Hot Pocket a calzone?
Applying the Cube Rule to solve this dilemma
I’ve shared “The Cube Rule of Food Identification” before but it will help us with this question. The Cube Rule is a theory that some internet folks invented to answer a very valid question of whether a hot dog is a sandwich or not. That initial question led them to the next question of whether Pop Tarts were ravioli.
These two conundrums caused a person named @Phosphatide to introduce “the cube rule for identifying what you’re eating.” They explained that The Cube Rule is a rule/theory for identifying dishes based on starch locations using the sides of a cube. So something like avocado toast only has one side of the cube dedicated to starch therefore it is a “toast” (see graphic).
The Cube Rule postulates that a calzone has structural starch on all sides, surrounding the interior ingredients so it falls into the 6th identity group which just happens to be named “calzone.” Therefore according to the Cube Rule, a Hot Pocket is definitely a calzone. And a stromboli is a calzone. And a Pop Tart is a calzone.
Whew, what a mess. Let’s get back to making some calzoni.
What kind of calzone are we making?
This is not a traditional calzone like one that you might find in Italy and stuff into your trousers or stockings. This a ham and cheese calzone which probably isn’t as popular of a choice for an American-style calzone as pepperoni and cheese but it is still a fairly common combination that you can find on restaurant menus.
This ham-filled calzone is stuffed to the brim with diced-up, smoked ham, melty cheese, and crispy hash brown potatoes inside of a folded-over baked turnover that I served with homemade honey mustard for dipping purposes.
Calzone dough or pizza dough?
I use my normal New York-ish-style pizza dough recipe to make these calzoni. It’s a dough that’s super easy to work with, you can keep it in a sealed container in the fridge for at least 4 days (and maybe longer) before rolling it out and baking it. The recipe makes dough for 4 fairly large calzoni or two 14-ish-inch, thin pizzas.
Here’s the base for the dough I use for this recipe. I also include the ingredients/description for the dough and how to shape it in the full ham, cheese, and crispy potato calzone recipe at the bottom of this blog post.
New York style pizza dough
This is less of a recipe for pizza and more of a recipe for the dough that I use and how it should be cooked. It's up to you to figure out what you want to top it with, but I think you probably already have an idea.
Get RecipeNow that we have the recipe and know what we’re working with, we just need to shape some dough.
Rolling pizza or calzone dough into a round shape
I know that when I first started making pizzas or tortillas that required shaping dough into round shapes, I had a bit of an initial struggle getting them circular. I figured this was a good time to create some very short video content about turning dough balls into circles. This is the first time I’ve created and embedded short video content (meaning not from YouTube or Instagram) directly in a blog post. Let me know if it’s helpful.
If you need to add flour at this point, try to only add it to the rolling pin and not the surface under the dough. Because once the dough starts sticking to the surface around the edges you can use that to your advantage. Using your fingers or the rolling pin, you can stretch the dough out just a bit more and start to shape your circle.
Remember, if you can’t get the dough to stretch quite as wide around as you’d like, or if the dough is springing back aggressively when you try to stretch it, you can cover it up with a clean kitchen towel and come back in 5 or 10 minutes and the gluten should have relaxed a bit allowing you to stretch the dough a bit further.
Ham
Ham is a very basic component of this sandwich and I didn’t make it from scratch, I just took some leftover ham from another sandwich project and put it to work here. But I knew that a ham and cheese calzone was a pretty popular combination so I put that leftover ham to work.
My local grocery sells Frick’s brand meat products and that’s what I typically buy when I need a little ham. You should check out these Frick-ing photos of ham for examples of ham just in case you’ve never seen ham.
I had a large, smoked, bone-in ham that I bought to use for next week’s sandwich (spoiler) and I used some of the edge pieces and large scraps for these calzoni. I simply cut them into bite-sized pieces and used them that way. If I didn’t have all of this extra ham and I wanted to make a similar calzone, I would have bought a ham steak and cut that into small pieces and it would have worked the same.
If you don’t have that option, you could always talk to the person at the deli counter at your grocery store and get them to slice you some ham in thick slices that you could cut up a bit further when it’s time to bake.
For the amount of ham in each calzone, I used between 5 to 7 ounces which turned into a pretty big calzone. I would suggest you only use the larger amount of meat if you have the dough rolled out at least 10 inches and you’re prepared for a large one to two-person calzone.
Cheese
I used sliced Swiss and Fontina cheeses for these calzoni because I had them available, and I just cut each slice into smaller pieces. You could use pretty much any cheese and you could use sliced, shredded, or cheese from a block that’s sliced into small pieces. For my recipe, I used 2 to 3 slices of deli sliced cheese which turned out to be about 2 to 3 ounces by weight.
If you have a scale, figuring out how much cheese to replicate what I did in my recipe is easy. If you don’t have a scale, we’re looking at a quarter of a half-pound block of cheese or like I said, either 2 or 3 regular sandwich-style slices.
Crispy potato patties
This is not a traditional calzone ingredient but it is fun and works well here.
I bought some frozen hash browns recently and felt they’d work well as an addition to the ham and cheese calzoni I was making. Turns out they add a bit of crispy texture that otherwise is missing from the calzone. These are pretty commonly available in the freezer section of major grocery stores right beside the frozen french fries. If you can’t get these styles of hash browns you can use tater tots with the same warming and crisping method or leave the potatoes out entirely if you don’t want to use them. They mostly just add texture to the calzone.
You can also make your own homemade extra-crispy potato patties if you are ambitious with some extra time. I have a really good recipe for those too. But these frozen ones do just fine and they’re a heck of a lot less time-consuming to make.
Crispy hash brown patties
A crispy, fried patty of grated potatoes that will work perfectly as a side to your next breakfast sandwich or even be used as a component in the sandwich itself.
Get Recipe
I am a frozen hash brown rebel and I do not cook per the recommended instructions.
As you can see from the photos above, I pan fry these directly from frozen. For two of them, I put about 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil in a pan and cook each patty for around 4 minutes per side on medium heat. After 8 minutes I continue cooking them, flipping often until both sides look nice and golden brown. I also find this pan fry technique works best for frozen “fast-food-style fries.”
This leads to a much easier cleanup than trying to deep fry hash brown patties and the crispiness is way better when cooking in a pan vs cooking in the oven. You can use Mr. Dee’s suggestions though if you’re scared.
Let these hash browns rest on a cooling rack or on top of a couple of paper towels for a couple of minutes while you get the rest of your calzone ingredients together.
Dipping sauces?
Unlike their cousin the stromboli, calzoni don’t typically have a whole lot of sauce inside them. This one does not have any sauce so it might be fun to serve these with a sauce for dipping or pouring over the top after serving. Here are three options for dipping sauces that I have ordered from my least favorite to my most favorite to pair with these ham and cheesy calzoni.
Homemade ranch
Everyone loves dipping stuff in ranch and I could see it working just fine with ham and cheese. But I think it’s probably a bit too creamy and rich to accompany the cheesy calzone. I also have this jalapeno ranch sauce recipe that might work better if you like a little spice.
Homemade ranch dressing
10 minutesRobin’s marinara
This is my wife’s marinara sauce and it’s good but I still prefer the idea of another sauce just a bit better to match the combo of ham and Swiss cheese.
Robin's marinara
50 minutesHoney mustard
This is the sauce I chose to use for dipping this calzone. Most of the calzone I ate without sauce, but getting to dip every second or third bite into some sweet and tangy mustard put the calzone experience over the top for me. I thought about putting some of the honey mustard inside the calzone, but didn’t really want any liquidy explosions so I dropped that idea.
Honey mustard sauce
Add a fantastic pop of flavor to a sandwich or make this sauce as a dip for your next chicken tender night.
Get RecipeCalzone assembly process
Here is a step-by-step photo representation of the assembly process I go through when making this ham, cheese, and crispy potato calzone. If you’re reading along, you probably figured all of this out for yourself already, but since I had the photos I figured I could share how I did things. Click any of the images in the group to jump into a larger slideshow if you want.
Ham and cheese calzone photos and recipe
Once you have the calzone fully put together the last bit is just cooking them at 500 F (260 C) for 13 to 18 minutes. I would suggest checking at 13 minutes just to see how dark they are and then going the full 18 minutes if you think they could be darker in color.
My oven bakes to the color brown you’re seeing in these photos at around 15 minutes. Scroll through for more photos and the recipe below.
Reheating leftovers
You can reheat a calzone if you don’t eat the whole thing. Baking in a 350 F (175 C) oven for 7 to 10 minutes should take care of getting the internals warm and melty again. Just try to put a piece of rolled-up aluminum foil under the exposed side to tilt it back so the cheese doesn’t flow out all over the pan.
Ham, cheese and crispy potato calzone
This is a super cheesy and hammy calzone with a lot of textures from the crispy hash brown patties and slightly chewy crust.
Ingredients:
Calzone dough- 450 grams bread flour (3 3/4 cups)
- 12 grams sugar (1 tablespoon)
- 11 grams salt (2 teaspoons)
- 3 grams instant yeast (1 teaspoon)
- 284 grams water (1 1/4 cups)
- 12 grams vegetable oil (1 tablespoon)
- 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
- 2 frozen hash brown patties
- 1 calzone dough ball (from above)
- 2 to 3 Swiss cheese slices (or Fontina or Provolone)
- 2 cripsy hash brown patties (from above)
- 4 to 7 ounces smoked ham, diced into small pieces
- 1 whole large egg
- 1 tablespoon water
- 1 tablespoon grated parmesan cheese (optional)
- ground black pepper (optional)
- non-stick spray or cornmeal
Directions:
Calzone dough: combine all ingredients in your stand mixer and using the dough hook knead for 6 to 8 minutes or until a smooth dough forms.
Shape the dough into a ball and place it in a lightly oiled sealed container in your fridge for 24 hours or overnight.
Shaping the dough: 1.5 hours before it's time to cook the pizza, pull the dough out and divide it into four portions. Shape each portion into a ball and place each ball under a clean kitchen towel. If you're not cooking all four dough balls (or calzones) at this time you can put the other dough balls back in a sealed container in the fridge for up to 4 or 5 days.
One hour before cooking, turn your oven to 500 degrees F (260 C).
Slowly stretch and roll with a rolling pin a dough ball into a round flat shape that's around 10 inches in diameter. If the dough doesn't seem like it wants to stretch that far, let it rest under a clean kitchen towel for 5 or 10 minutes which will allow the gluten to relax and stretch more.
Preheat oven: once time to bake, preheat the oven to 500 F.
Fry hash brown patties: while the oven is preheating, add 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil to a pan over medium heat. Once the pan is shimmering add the two still-frozen hash brown patties and fry for 4 minutes.
Flip the patties and cook for another 4 minutes. Continue flipping every minute until both sides are golden brown and crispy.
Remove the hash brown patties to a paper towel-lined plate or a cooling rack while you prep everything else.
Build calzone: for a photo slideshow with instructions on how I build calzones, please refer to the ham, cheese, and crispy potato calzone blog post.
We're going to place all of the ingredients in the lower half of the circle of dough closest to you and then fold the other half of the circle over the top of the ingredients. I start with cheese and spread a third of the cheese directly on the bottom half of the dough.
Top the cheese with the two hash brown patties and then cover those with half of the remaining cheese. Then repeat by adding ham and the final bit of cheese.
Once all the ingredients are in a nice pile on the lower half of the dough circle, carefully fold the top half over the top of all the ingredients. Press and seal the seam where the two edges of the dough meet.
After the calzone is sealed, spray a sheet pan with non-stick spray or a sprinkling of cornmeal and place the calzone on top. Either of these options should keep the calzone from sticking to the pan.
Egg wash: in a small bowl, crack and add 1 egg and 1 tablespoon of water. Whisk to combine and then paint the top of the exposed dough with the egg wash. This will help the top of the dough to brown evenly.
Sprinkle grated parmesan and ground black pepper on the top of the dough right before you add it to the oven.
Bake the calzone for 13 to 18 minutes. My oven takes about 14 minutes to get to a good golden brown color.
Remove the calzone to a cooling rack after baking for 5 minutes. It will be super hot in the interior and this cooling time will save you from some super hot bites.
Serve and enjoy.
Notes:
Want smaller calzones?
These are large calzones and they will possibly be too much food for one person. If you want to size them down a little you can do that by making six equal-sized dough balls and using just one hash brown patty and the lowest amount of cheese and ham that is listed in the ingredients for each calzone.
If you make six dough balls, you should only roll the dough out to about 8 inches instead of the original 10 inches that is listed in the recipe instructions.
Check back next week
Next week: more ham and less cheese. It’s a ham and dough double feature around these parts!
