Ham, cheese and crispy potato calzone

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.