Let’s all be glad that a long time ago someone had the good sense to fold their pizza into a pocket before they baked it, thus giving birth to the calzone. It’s true that a calzone is basically just an ordinary pizza folded in half, but there’s something fun about eating a calzone instead of pizza, much in the same way it’s sometimes more enjoyable to eat a burrito instead of a taco. We couldn’t figure out what we wanted for dinner until we realized we had all the ingredients for a pizza, but what we really wanted were calzones.
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp oil
- 1 onion, diced
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1 bunch spinach
- 5 medium tomatoes, diced
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1 tsp Italian seasoning
- 1 tsp red wine vinegar
- 1 cup vegan mozzarella – we used Daiya
- 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
- 1 tbsp vegan butter, melted
- Pizza dough – the pizza dough I use weekly can be found here
Instructions
- Prepare pizza dough and place on top of oven to rise while preheating to 550 degrees (or as hot as it can go).
- In a pan, heat oil to medium heat. Add onions and saute for a few minutes.
- Add tomatoes, salt, pepper, sugar, red pepper flakes, Italian seasoning and vinegar to pan and stir. Lower heat and simmer the tomatoes until they are tender (about 30 minutes). Alternatively, you can use store bought marinara sauce.
- Once the tomatoes are soft, crush them with a spoon or potato masher and the simmer until the sauce thickens.
- Stir in spinach until it's wilted and remove from heat.
- Prepare the calzones by dividing the dough into two equal sized balls (these will be two big ass calzones, or you can divide it into 4 for smaller ones).
- Roll each dough ball to form a thin circle.
- Add a big scoop of tomato sauce to half of the calzone and add vegan cheese and nutritional yeast. Fold over the other half and seal the edges by pressing down with a fork.
- Brush melted butter on top of calzone and top with some Italian seasoning and sea salt and bake for 15 minutes or until crust is golden brown.
Notes
I usually bake the pizza for 14 minutes on the baking sheet and then a minute or two longer directly on the rack to ensure a crunchy crust, but be careful, because they will burn easily.
We hope you enjoyed this Spinach & Tomato Calzone recipe. If you’d like to find more vegan recipes like this one, check out more of VeganFoodLover.com.
Leave a Reply