Calzones On The Grill

by A.J. Coltrane

It’s too hot to turn on the oven, so… Calzones On The Grill!

The dough recipe:  1-1/2 cups flour, 1/2 cup water, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp instant yeast, and 1-1/2 tsp extra-virgin olive oil. (Essentially the Smitten Kitchen pizza dough recipe, goosing the yeast slightly.) An Allrecipes.com recipe calls for brushing the calzones with melted butter before baking, and that 350F is a good target for the grill temperature.

That all sounds reasonable. And reasonably easy. So here’s my first attempt at grilled calzones, or any calzones, really — I think it’s remarkable that it’s taken me this long to fold pizza in half before baking.

The dough was given a bulk rise for almost two hours, then divided in half. Each half was rolled into balls and allowed to rest for about 20 minutes. During that time I browned off some mild italian sausage, then cooked the rawness out of a diced red pepper and some yellow onion in the sausage fat.

The dough balls were rolled out and topped with a streak of red sauce and some grated mozz. The sausage, red pepper, onion, and some crumbled leftover pepper bacon were added, then topped with more sauce and mozz.

The packages were folded over and crimped, brushed with melted butter, and slit with a knife.

I turned on the left of the three grill burners and carefully placed the calzones over direct heat for a few minutes, then moved the packages to the far right of the grill — far away from the direct heat.

All that was left at that point was to cook the calzones for about 30-35 minutes. Naturally this involved drinking a beverage while periodically checking to make sure the thermometer said something like 350F.

The interior. (The last two photos were taken in direct sunlight. I rolled out a bit of a roll of paper towels and filtered the sunlight through the white towels. A paper towel improvised light diffuser! *I* thought it was pretty clever.)

In retrospect, I might have added a little sugar or honey to the dough to promote more browning. I didn’t do that because I was concerned about the end result being too brown. It worked out ok though — I may have to figure out more stuff to grill.

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Late edit:  CSE’s 500th published post! Woof!