Garlic bread pizza and calzone dough! This dough recipe is very versatile. Use it as a pizza crust, for calzones, or make garlic breadsticks! It's so delicious... Buttery with the perfect amount of garlic and a touch of oregano. It tastes exactly like garlic bread. It's chewy without being tough and it crisps up perfectly without getting hard! The perfect balance of chewy, soft, and crispy and it holds up well to sauces, it doesn't get soggy.
The dough recipe calls for a couple of interesting ingredients. One thing to note is that it calls for mostly whole wheat flour. This is for nutrition reasons, but also for flavor reasons. I think it gives a deeper flavor. Because it calls for mostly whole wheat flour I add a little bit of instant mashed potato flakes. The starch in the potato helps add softness and improve gluten development in whole wheat flour. It's a natural dough enhancer. You can read about more natural dough enhancers here:
https://bit.ly/33iGFT5 This recipe also calls for butter extract! You should be able to find it near the vanilla extract in the baking aisle. Get naturally flavored butter extract if you can, artificial butter flavoring can taste a bit odd. The butter extract gives it an extra buttery flavor!
This recipe doesn't really have a proofing step for the yeast at the beginning. So, only use relatively fresh yeast for this recipe. Don't use the old yeast in the back of your cabinet that may or may not be alive. Because you won't be able to tell for a few hours and you'll waste a batch of dough if the yeast turns out to be dead.
In addition to the recipe for the dough recipe (which is the real star here), I'm going to include my recipe for white pizza calzone filling. But of course, you can use any fillings you like! The white pizza one is just my personal favorite.
After steps 1-11 follow one of these additional instructions to make one of either calzones, pizza, or breadsticks using the garlic bread pizza and calzone dough!
To make calzones:
- Preheat your oven to 425°F
- Cut the dough into 12 even pieces.
- Roll out each dough piece into a 1/4 inch thick circle
- Add fillings to one half of the dough circle
- Carefully, stretch and fold the other half of the dough over.
- Press the edges closed with a fork.
- Carefully transfer to a greased sheet pan.
- Repeat
- Brush the top of each calzone with the butter-garlic topping and sprinkle with grated parmesan cheese.
- Bake for about 30 minutes.
To make breadsticks:
For visual instructions check out this video:
- Cut the dough into 12 even pieces.
- Roll each piece of dough into a breadstick shape using your hands.
- Place onto a greased sheet pan.
- Repeat
- Cover the pan with a damp cloth and let rise at room temperature for 15 minutes.
- Preheat your oven to 450°F
- Brush the tops of the dough with the butter-garlic topping and sprinkle with parmesan cheese.
- When the oven comes to temperature, place the breadsticks in the oven and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown.
To make pizza crust:
- Preheat your oven to 450°F
- Grease a metal pizza pan or a large sheet pan and oil your hands generously.
- Place the dough in the middle on the pan and press and stretch it out towards the edges of the pan as evenly as you can. If you like a thick crust, stop when its a 1/4 inch thick. If you like a thin crust press it out further until its an 1/8 of an inch thick.
- Brush the entire top of the dough with the butter-garlic topping.
- Top with any sauces, cheese, and topping you want.
- Sprinkle any exposed crust with parmesan.
- Bake for about 30 minutes or until the crust is golden brown.
- Slice!
Looking for something to serve your breadsticks with? Or maybe, you like meatballs in your calzones? Try my easy baked meatball recipe!
https://bit.ly/30luUZY