We’re back with another episode of “for the love of Pete don’t you measure anything?” And the answer is yes! I (mostly) measured the ingredients I used to make the dough I used for this. For the most part, this is really just a guideline for you to follow and customize to whatever your dietary needs and preferences are.
Ingredients
- Bread – these are the ingredients and ratios I used, adapted from a recipe in The Complete Guide to Bread Machine Baking
- 1/2 cup water, 5 large pieces of pepperoni, 1T vegetable oil, 2 cups bread flour, 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese, 1tsp sugar, salt, oregano, 1tsp yeast, 2T tomato sauce
- Filling
- 1lb ground pork, 1 small onion, 2 cloves garlic, salt, pepper, southwest seasoning
- Cheese, tomato sauce
Let’s get cooking
I’ve been a huge fan lately of making dough in the bread maker and then baking it in the oven, so for this I started by loading the ingredients for the bread into the bread maker. It called for green peppers which I didn’t have so I left them out, and I used oregano instead of the ground fennel seed it suggested. And a vodka sauce instead of tomato paste. I picked the dough setting on the machine and came back to it later. If you don’t have a bread maker, you can easily substitute pizza dough (homemade or premade), or look up the instructions for letting bread rise on the counter.
While the dough was working I made the filling. Chopped up the onion and the garlic so they could start softening in the pan first, and then added the ground pork. The meat was still a little bit frozen so once it was all cooked through and broken up I let the extra water cook off before adding some of the jar of sauce and letting it cook down again to thicken. When it seemed thick enough to me, I turned off the burner and left it to cool.
After the dough finished I microwaved a bowl of water for a minute and a half in an attempt to warm up the microwave and leave some humidity in there to encourage the dough to finish rising in an oiled bowl. Did it work?
🤷🏼♀️
The dough didn’t seem any bigger so maybe it didn’t do anything. It didn’t seem to hurt it, but my main goal was trying to keep it from rising more while it was baking and that was a success.
When everything was cooled I rolled out the dough to a large rectangularish shape. Brushed on some sauce. Spread an even layer of filling (I didn’t use all of mine). Top with pieces of mozzarella. Roll as neatly as you can, place seam side down on an oiled baking sheet (the important part is that it doesn’t stick). Top with sauce and shredded cheese, into the oven at 350 for 30 minutes and then another 20 on 275 before I turned the oven off and let it sit in there for about 20 minutes because I wanted to keep everything warm.
It. Was. Amazing.
The dough on the inner rolls was still doughy rather than bread like, which added a lot to the overall pizza feel in the mouth. Making it again I’d probably bake it for 40-45 minutes at 350 and then turn the oven off and leave it alone for another 15-30 minutes. Overall I’m really happy with how it came out.
