Pizza Pockets – Easy Calzone Recipe
You might call these calzone, but my kids call them pizza pockets, and they are a fun and easy family dinner idea.
Get the kids to help you make some pizza dough (or use store bought) and they can fill each pizza pocket with a filling of their choice, for a budget-friendly meal that even picky eaters will love!
With a family of six, including a couple of ‘picky eaters‘, there are not many dinners that get a thumbs up from everyone. So when I find a meal that everyone likes I go with it, and I go with it often!
Homemade Pizza is one of those rare meals that makes everyone happy, but only if you get a pizza with your favourite toppings on it. That means I end up making six different pizzas, which is fine, but I can’t fit six pizzas in my oven at once so it takes forever to cook them all. But I have an answer to this dinner dilemma – Pizza Pockets!
You might know these folded over pizzas as Calzone, but my kids call them pizza pockets. Whatever you call them, they are delicious, and easy to make!
We use our favourite homemade pizza dough (recipe below) to make our pizza pockets, but you can also use store bought dough, or even frozen puff pastry. Fill these little pockets with whatever your favourite pizza toppings happens to be and don’t forget the cheese!
Because these are folded over pizzas you only need to use half the pizza sauce and a lot less cheese than you would for a flat pizza which make these a great budget friendly dinner options.
You can freeze these, uncooked, and simply pop them in the oven to thaw and bake. So if you have the time, make a double batch and freeze half – your future self will be super grateful when you just can’t face making dinner and you can whip these out of the freezer!
Top Tip: Because these pizzas are folded over and you can’t see what is inside them, you’ll need to mark the outside somehow so you know who belongs to which pizza! You can roll out a little dough into sausages to make letters to name the top of each pizza, or put a piece of the toppings on the outside to denote what is inside.
Pizza Pockets (Calzone)
You might call these calzone, but my kids call them pizza pockets, and they are a fun and easy family dinner idea.
Ingredients
For the Pizza Dough
- 250 ml of warm water
- 2 tsp of yeast
- 1 tsp of sugar
- 3 tbsp of olive oil
- 500 gm of flour (bread flour works best, or add bread improver)
- a pinch of salt.
For the Pizza Sauce
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup tomato paste
- 1 tbsp water
- minced garlic and herbs to taste.
Pizza Pocket Filling Suggestions
- Cheese
- mushrooms
- olives
- pineapple
- capsicum
- ham/salami
Instructions
To Make the Pizza Dough
- Combine the yeast, sugar and warm water and set aside for five minutes until the yeast begins to bubble.
- Add the olive oil to the yeast mixture.
- In a large bowl, or the bowl of your bread machine, combine the flour and salt and make a well in the centre.
- Add the yeast mixture into the flour and slowly combine wet and dry ingredients until you form a dough - add more water if needed.
- Knead the dough and set aside to rise. Or use your bread machine on the dough setting to knead and rise the dough.
- Once the dough has doubled in sized, knock the air out of it with a quick knead and you are ready to make the pizza pockets.
To Make the Pizza Sauce
- Crack the egg into a small bowl, add the water and whisk well.
- Add the tomato paste (more or less depending on the number of pizzas you are making), garlic and herbs and mix well.
- Add more water if needed.
Making the Pizza Pockets.
- Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
- Gather and prepare your pizza fillings and sauce.
- Cut the dough into six pieces.
- Using a piece of baking paper as your surface roll out a piece of dough into a rough circle.
- Cover one half of the dough with pizza sauce, cheese and toppings, then fold over the dough to make a half circle.
- Fold over and pinch the edges to seal your pizza pocket.
- Mark the top of your pizza pocket so you know what is inside.
- Using the baking paper lift the pizza pocket on to a baking tray and bake in a hot oven for 10-15 minutes or until they begin to brown,
Please note: this recipe uses Australian measurements and cooking temperatures, if you need to convert measurements or temperatures this website is useful.
What’s the one meal that you cook that everyone in your family eats and loves?
If you liked this easy family dinner recipe you might like to check out these budget friendly dinner ideas too.
Reckon these would work for school lunches too? Was up for something new and these might be the ticket!
they work great in school lunches, I make little ones for my girls to take to school the next day.
Yay! Love this idea! Totally forgot that you could do this with pizza bases!
My ‘go to’ recipe (when I lose track of time and realise that dinner needs to be served asap!)…is Spaghetti!
Get the water boiling for the spaghetti.
Defrost 500g mince, add onion & garlic. Chuck in a can of tomato soup and a couple of bay leaves then let it simmer.
Quick, easy and yummy!
I use this recipe every. single. week.
Was going to ask you just yesterday (as I made it) if you’ve blogged it!!
Best and easiest pizza dough ever. We have homemade pizzas every weekend and have neatly cut out takeaway altogether!
I love making these. I fill them with all sorts of different things. After I cook them, I put them into the freezer for a quickie microwave meal.
oh that is an awesome idea!!! Thanks for sharing it!
Our easy night is pizza night too! I cheat big time.
We bought one of those electric pizza makers. I love it because it’s fast – the cooking time for one pizza is about four minutes. Admittedly, there’s only three of us, but I also cook this way when friends drop in on Sunday night. I buy the small bases from the bread section of the supermarket and have them in the freezer. Prepare the ingredients, pop them on, cook and yum!
Love this recipe Kate. Would make a nice change from our homemade pizza.
These looks awesome! Thanks for the idea!!!!
Love this recipe, it sounds great and looks delish :)
I’ll be giving it a go for sure :)
My kids would so love this and it would earn me some serious mummy points if I made it. Thanks xx
These look fantastic and am sure my kids would love them since they love pizzas and pasties.
Thanks
delish, these look like sunday lunch to me! and…i think i recognise you from the scrapping world…;)
Thanks for the recipe – I’ve found my easy Friday night dinner! I knew the recipe linkup would provide a solution – yum :) how many pockets would this recipe make?
Our go to recipe? Tuna mornay with rice!