Mushroom, Artichoke, and Fontina Calzones

I have mentioned one of my favorite little food publications, Everyday Food, before. The most recent issue contains a little ditty on calzones with a bunch of suggested fillings. The one I made tonight was delightful, simple, and full of flavor. Use any dough you like, but I'd really recommend using the pizza dough recipe I blogged about in a previous post. It's fast and was perfect for this purpose as well.

Mushroom, Artichoke, and Fontina Calzones
-adapted from Everyday Food

-1 lb. pizza dough
-8 oz fresh mushrooms (regular button, portobello, whatever you like)
-6 oz. Fontina cheese
-1 c. marinated artichoke hearts (the ones in a jar, not the can packed in water)

Saute mushrooms in a bit of olive oil, and a sprinkling of salt and pepper, until golden. Thinly slice or grate your cheese. Drain artichoke hearts, squeeze out the liquid, and chop. At this point, you have some options. You can make one enormous calzone, or divide it up. I made 2 tiny calzones with just cheese for my wee ones, and then divided the rest of the dough up into 2 bigger ones for my husband and I. All you need to do is flatten each piece of dough and spread it into a circle with your hands (or roll with a rolling pin), then top one half with cheese, mushrooms, and artichoke hearts. Fold the other half over the fillings, roll and crimp edges so you have a cute little half moon. Brush with oil and sprinkle with a bit of kosher salt. Carefully transfer to an oiled baking sheet (or just make the calzones on the actual baking sheet as I did) and bake at 425 until golden and crisp. The time depends on how big your calzones are, but you can count on 15-20 min or so. Just watch them closely and peek at the bottoms of them for those will brown much more quickly than the top--you don't want a burnt-bottom calzone now, do you? Let cool slightly, slice in half and serve with warmed pizza sauce for dipping (I whipped some up in the food processor in about 60 seconds). I was too busy enjoying them to snap pictures of the finished product, but here is what my grown-up sized calzones looked like as they were headed into the oven. I assure you they looked much better when I pulled them out.That's the beauty of the interaction between oven and dough....magical aesthetic transformation!