Recipe Stalking Shannon : Spicy Sausage and Roasted Pepper Calzone

A great thing to do for meal ideas, in my opinion, is to recipe stalk Shannon (aka Aunt Shanny).  She has a ginormous selection of recipes posted here on Gather, and if you don't have one of the ingredients called for in something I guarantee she has an idea of something you can use in place of it or some way you can make whatever it is yourself.  I didn't have buttermilk one time for a recipe she had posted, and she explained that I could use lemon juice in regular milk to make sour milk.  She gave me a recipe another time for homemade pizza dough when I had no store-bought on hand to make another of her recipes.  The lady is full to the brim with cooking hints and ideas, I tell ya.  Not to even mention the fact that I have yet to fix something she's posted that we didn't absolutely love.

Now to set the praise for Shannon aside, last week she posted a recipe for Spicy Sausage and Roasted Three Pepper Calzone.  You can see her original post by clicking HERE.  It looked and sounded wonderful to me, and skimming through the ingredients list I saw that with a few minor changes I actually had everything to fix it.  I did have to rename mine "Spicy Sausage and Roasted Pepper Calzone" since I didn't have all three colors of peppers; I only had green.

This recipe was a huge hit with me and my husband.  We absolutely loved it.  Haley, my six-year-old, had very favorable comments to make too, although she didn't eat as much as I had hoped.  Parker, my four-year-old, hardly ate any at all, but he's more of a "meat man" anyway.  In fact, I think he pretty much just picked his sausage out and ate that.  This would be an easy meal to fix for company, and I'm already thinking of making it for a guest that will be here with us next week.  We recommend it.  Easy, tasty, and it also reheated well.  Oh, and the dipping sauce was superb!  It was my favorite part I think.  It tasted excellent with the calzone.

The recipe shown here is Shannon's original with my changes made in parenthesis along with photos I took along the way of preparation.  Fix this; you won't regret it!

Spicy Sausage and Roasted Three Pepper Calzone

Ingredients:

1 lb spicy Italian sausage (I used a 1 lb roll of regular spicy sausage)

1 recipe pizza dough (I used the recipe that came with my bread machine)

1/2 each: thinly sliced roasted orange, yellow and red bell pepper (I used 2 1/2 green peppers instead since I didn't have the orange and yellow ones.)

1-2 sliced tomatoes (I used romas too.)

• 1 cup black olives, chopped

1 1/2 cups shredded Italian blend cheese (I didn't have an Italian blend so I used a colby/monteray jack blend.)  (Didn't get a photo of this one.)

I also added 1 cup of sliced mushrooms too.

Dipping Sauce Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup canned diced tomatoes, pureed (I
• couldn't puree these since I don't have anything to puree with.)
• 1 T olive oil
• 1 T minced fresh basil (I used dried; didn't have fresh.)
• 1/2 t dried oregano, rubbed
• 1/2 t sugar
• salt and black pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Heat a large frying pan over medium high heat. Add sausage and brown. Remove from heat. Set aside.
2. Roll dough into a large circle on a lightly floured surface (the size will depend on how thick you want your calzone). Add sausage to half of dough, leaving a 1/2" border. Top with remaining ingredients.
3. Fold dough over filling; crimp edges to seal. Pierce the top of the dough with a small knife. Carefully place calzone on heated pizza stone.Preheat oven to 500°. Add a pizza stone to preheat.
4. Bake 15 minutes or til golden brown. Let rest a few minutes before slicing.
5. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix together sauce ingredients. Serve calzone with dipping sauce.

I couldn't decide if I wanted to make four individual calzones or just make one giant one.  I opted for the giant one.  (Next time I think I'll just make individual ones.)  This sucker was HUGE!

Here you can see the ginormous calzone in relation to Haley's hand.

End result here.

Dippping a piece of my calzone into the yummy dipping sauce.