Sausage, Spinach, Mushroom Calzones

Do you know the difference between a calzone and a stromboli?  A stromboli has the pizza sauce baked into it, kinda like a Hot Pocket.  A calzone however, only contains the "toppings" minus the sauce.  The sauce is usually served on the side for dipping.

I found a recipe from a FB friend of mine for calzones and they sounded delicious!  Here's her original recipe.  I didn't have quite the same ingredients that she used in my pantry at the time, so I improvised.  I mean, calzones are pretty much the same as pizza in their versatility.  So I used pizza dough that I made previously in the bread maker and frozen.  I also heated up some frozen sausage patties and cut them into chunks, thawed and drained some spinach, and threw in a can of mushrooms, along with some ricotta, mozzarella, and a little fresh Parmesan cheese!

I started by thawing the dough and rolling it out into a big square(ish) shape, haha. I mixed all my toppings together in a bowl and then spooned them onto half of the dough, leaving a few inches on the three sides that will have seams.

I just added sausage, mushrooms, and cheese to the kids' calzones, only because I didn't want Taylor to decide not to eat the whole thing, just because she saw something green inside.  She's going through a phase lately where she doesn't like broccoli or spinach.  Strange, huh? :)  Let's just hope it doesn't last until she's an adult!

After I folded the top over the rest of the dough, I sealed the seams with a fork and poked a few holes in the top to vent.  I also brushed the tops with a little butter before baking.  I think that a little bit of Italian seasoning and/or garlic powder and onion powder would have been great to sprinkle on the top, but alas, I didn't even think about that until just now as I am typing this... :)

They may not be perfectly square, but that's one of the things I like about these.  You can tell they're homemade.  And please disregard the wax paper, apparently I have trouble reading sometimes and instead of using parchment paper, I grabbed wax paper.  Oh well, it didn't catch on fire and it didn't stick to the food, so all's well that ends well. :)

 Here's the final product.  Don't you like the awesome food positioning?  With just a little bit of cheese oozing out of the warm, doughy shell?  Yeah, that was Marcus's idea. Hopefully it makes you hungry and you go try these!! ;)