A Georgia Girl in Germany

Shortly before the Christmas break, Zachary had to complete a “sequence project” for his Language Arts class. Essentially, he had to describe something with at least 10 steps. At first he wasn’t sure what to do his project on, but he finally decided to explain how to make his favorite meal (OK, so he spent THREE WEEKS “thinking” about the project before putting it together in three days!). For those of you who have seen me bring this in to work for lunch as leftovers and have asked me how to make it, here’s Zachary’s explanation.

How to make a Broccoli Calzone (A.K.A., broccoli bread)
By: Zachary Cook

If you are hungry, want something Italian, and don’t want pasta, then try making broccoli bread. Broccoli bread is a type of large calzone with broccoli, tomatoes, pepperoni, and a couple types of cheese. With this dinner, you can make four to five servings. You can even save it for another day for lunch or if you just don’t feel like cooking.

Step One: Gather all of the needed supplies.

First, you will need to gather all of the ingredients to make dinner. Some things you might have to go out and buy from the commissary, although you might already have some items on the list. The ingredients you might need to buy are:
-one loaf of frozen bread dough,
-four to six oz. of provolone cheese,
-a pack of pepperoni, or if you want healthier results, turkey pepperoni, (70% less fat),
-up to a pound of broccoli (you will need at least 10 oz.),
-eight oz. of mozzarella cheese,
-and two medium tomatoes

Step Two: Rising the bread.

Once you have the ingredients, you will need to preheat the oven to 200°F or about 100°C, turn it off when it reaches that temperature, put the bread dough in a pan, boil some water, then pour the water into another pan, and set them both in the oven so that the dough can rise. WARNING! If you don’t put the dough in the oven around noon, it will not rise enough in time for baking the calzone that night.

Step Three: Rolling the dough.

When you’re ready to begin cooking, pour some flour on the counter or a cookie sheet sized rolling board, get a rolling pin and flatten the dough. Next, roll out the dough to about the size of a cookie sheet.

Step Four: Preparing the fillings.

The next thing you will have to do is boil the broccoli. The broccoli takes the longest. While the broccoli is boiling, you should start cutting the pepperoni into quarters. You should cut the provolone into half-inch slices. Then dice the tomatoes.



{{Nana was helping Zachary, and she simply couldn’t let the extra tomato juice go to waste! Yes, this is a common sight when Nana is around tomatoes!}}

Step Five: Applying the fillings.

Once you have all of the ingredients ready, you will need to put them on the flattened dough, leaving an inch on all edges. Before you do this though, you will need to preheat the oven to 350°F or 175°C You will need to place the different fillings in a specific order in the middle of the dough. The order that you place them in from bottom to top is:

1. provolone cheese
2. pepperoni
3. broccoli
4. tomatoes
5. mozzarella

If you want to add other fillings, you may, but the cheeses must always stay first and last.

Step Six: Folding the dough.

When you fold up the dough, you must make sure that the edges overlap. First, you will need to fold the long edges over the toppings so that they overlap, almost like a flattish burrito. Once you do that, you will have to fold the empty ends of the “burrito” in toward the middle. *NOTE* Do not fold any parts that have fillings in them.

Step Seven: Flipping the calzone.

Once all of the previous steps are completed, you will need to get out a 10 by 15 inch cookie sheet, spray it with cooking spray, and place it upside down over the bread dough. Then, grab everything and flip it over. Now you should have a nice, smooth lump of uncooked broccoli bread.

Step Eight: Baking.

After the calzone is ready to go in the oven, cut three slanted one-inch holes in the top of the calzone. Make sure that the holes are at least one inch from each other. When the oven is at the temperature that you set it to, and the calzone is ready to bake, place it in the oven and let it bake for half an hour. After the half hour, take it out of the oven (with oven mitts).

Step Nine: Cutting the calzone.

Once the calzone is out of the oven, slice it into two- to three-inch slices and place onto plates to serve.

Step Ten: Eating the calzone.

Eat. Devour. Digest. Enjoy. Oh, and use a knife to cut your bites.

The End

Labels: Cooking, Nana and Papa, Zachary