Our Sausage and Pepper Calzones are made with pizza dough folded around a filling of pizza sauce, cooked Italian sausage and peppers, and cheese.
Please accept our apologies…this Sausage and Pepper Calzone recipe is long overdue!
We’ve been planning to share one of our favorite calzone recipes here on A Family Feast for a long time because the word “calzone” shows up almost every week on our website’s search report that lists all of the different recipes our readers search for on our site, but don’t find. 🙁 (We’re sorry to keep you waiting!)
So finally – here is one of our favorites – a delicious Sausage and Pepper Calzone!
Calzones originated in Naples, Italy and are shaped like a folded pizza. But interestingly, according to Wikipedia, the word references “stocking” or “trouser” in Italian. Traditionally, calzones were made from salted bread dough, but here in the United States, calzones are most often made out of pizza dough like our recipe today.
Making a calzone is really very easy! After rolling out the dough, you just fill it with your favorite meats, cheeses and vegetables. We filled ours with an easy no-cook pizza sauce, pre-cooked sweet Italian sausage, sautéed red peppers and onions, pesto, and a mix of ricotta, Parmesan and mozzarella cheeses.
Once filled, fold the dough over, pinch the edges with your fingers and cut some slits in the top so the air inside the calzone vents as it bakes. Once it is golden on the outside and hot and melted on the inside, remove the oven and serve. You can slice larger calzones in half, or smaller calzones can be served as a standalone hot pocket.
We like to serve our Sausage and Pepper Calzone with an additional bowl of pizza sauce on the side – you can use your favorite jarred sauce, our Roasted Tomato Pizza Sauce, or our Easy No-Cook Pizza Sauce.
PrintSausage and Pepper Calzone
Our Sausage and Pepper Calzones are made with pizza dough folded around a filling of pizza sauce, cooked Italian sausage and peppers, and cheese.
- Prep Time: 30 mins
- Cook Time: 10 mins
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 4 servings 1x
- Category: entree
- Method: Baked
- Cuisine: Mexican
Ingredients
- 20 ounces pizza dough
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1/2 large plump red bell pepper, cut into vertical strips
- 1/2 large yellow onion sliced vertically
- 1/4 teaspoon dry oregano
- 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
- Pinch red pepper flakes
- 2 Italian sausage links, removed from casing (sweet or hot – your choice)
- 6 tablespoons whole milk ricotta cheese
- 2 teaspoons pesto
- 4 tablespoons pizza sauce
- 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
- 1 tablespoon Parmesan cheese
- Flour for dusting your counter workspace
- Corn meal for pizza peel
- 1 egg
- Pizza stone
Instructions
- On a floured surface cut the pizza dough in half, roll into two round discs and place in a warm place covered with a dish towel while you prepare the rest of the dish.
- In a large sauté pan, over medium high, place oil and heat.
- Once the oil is hot, add peppers, onions, oregano, garlic and pepper flakes and reduce to medium and cook for about five minutes until they have softened but still have a bit of a crunch. Remove to a bowl and set aside.
- In the same pan over medium high, place sausage and break apart with two wooden spoons into small pieces. Cook until browned and no longer pink, about five minutes. Pour into a strainer and strain out all fat. Discard fat and set cooked sausage aside.
- When the dough has warmed up and is pliable, preheat the oven to 525 degrees and place a pizza stone
in the center of the oven on rack. - On a floured surface, flatten each disc to 10 inches round.
- Sprinkle the pizza peel with corn meal and place one 10 inch round over top.
- Smear half of one side with half of the ricotta leaving about a half inch edge.
- Spoon half the pestoover the ricotta.
- Spoon half the pizza sauce over the mixture, again keeping the edge clean.
- Top with half the cooked onions and peppers.
- Top with half the cooked sausage meat.
- Top with half the mozzarella and half the Parmesan.
- Wet the edge near the filling with water, leaving the other side dry.
- Fold the dry half over the filling, meeting the wet edge.
- Starting from one corner, pull the bottom dough up and slightly over the top dough and pinch. Continue from tip to tip and then go back and do it again so the seal is solid.
- Mix the egg with a fork and brush it over the top leaving the edge untouched.
- Take a sharp knife and make three slits across the center for steam to escape.
- Slide the calzone onto the pizza stone and time it 8 minutes. Check for browning and doneness and bake for 2 more minutes if needed.
- Repeat steps above for second dough disc.
- Serve cut in half with additional pizza sauce on the side for dipping.
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This recipe looks great and I want to try it but have a question about the dough. Your pizza dough recipe makes 42 ounces of dough based on your reference of (6) 7 ounce dough balls. I’d like to make 5-6 inch individual calzones. Any idea how many I would get with a full pizza dough recipe? I’m trying to make some extra to freeze and calculate the filling. Thanks for your help!
Hi Juila, I love questions like this.
Our perfect pizza dough recipe makes six 7-ounce dough balls, so 42 ounces as you state. The recipe states that each dough ball makes a pizza circle 9-12 inches round. If your individual calzones are 5-6 inches, then you should get 12 calzones. However, what is more likely is probably closer to ten since a calzone half the size of a 12-inch pizza would be really small. The filling would depend on what you plan to fill them with but let’s generalize and say that for ten small calzones, you would need about 1 1/2 to 2 cups of sauce, plus more for dipping, 2-3 cups of cheese (probably shredded mozzarella) and 2-3 cups of filling (meat, veggies, etc.) These are estimates of course. If you go to our main page and search for pizza, we have quite a few and maybe that could give you ideas on quantities. Each pizza recipe we have uses a 7-10 ounce pizza dough so just cut the filling and toppings in half and then multiply back times ten.
Good luck,
Jack
Love all your recipes .thank you carolann
Thank you so much Carolann! We’re glad you found us!
I am vacationing in FL, I always treat friends to homemade pizza and this week I am changing it up with your calzone recipe. The recipe looks very tasty and I am excited to try it. 525° F may be a bit hot for the oven in my unit – crossing my fingers I don’t set off the fire detector too often. 😁
Hope you enjoy the calzone Penny!
I’m in the middle of preparing these calzones (my kitchen smells amazing and your pizza sauce is to die for!)…however, I’m a bit overwhelmed by all of the instructions. I feel like this recipe would be a good candidate for a video so I can actually see you doing some of the steps. Hoping I’m doing this right, but looking forward to devouring them anyway! 🙂
Thanks for your comment Cassandra! Jack and I have actually been talking about including videos in some of our posts with more complicated instructions…we hope to start that in the coming months. I hope your calzones were delicious and thanks for taking the time to write to us!
Hi Michelle – Yes – that is correct. We bake our pizzas at 550 degrees for 7 minutes. This is baked at oven temps of between 500-525 degrees for about 10 minutes. Hope that helps – sorry for the confusion!