Sun-dried Tomato, Goat Cheese and Chicken Sausage Calzone

To use up the other half of the pizza dough I made the other night, I wanted to try making a calzone. Not surprisingly, my inspiration for this came from A Year in the Kitchen. (Yes, I realize I cite this blog for a lot of the recipes I've been trying out, but with well over 700 posts of food I really love, its hard not to!) She had a calzone with ricotta, goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. Oddly enough, I had all of these things on hand. It sounded wonderful!

I did choose to substitute chicken sausage for the chicken, just because I thought it would be really good. I was right; Sage loved this. I think his words were: This is flippin' delicious! In fact, he said he liked it even better than the pizza the other night. It was toddler approved as well. I did use half the amount of goat cheese since I was also having some on our salad and a little less ricotta and tomatoes because I thought my dough ball seemed a little small. Since the sausage is fully cooked, I didn't bother browning it first. This was easy to make and oh so good! I will be experimenting with my own calzone fillings in the future!

adapted from Chicken Bada Bing Calzone, A Year in the Kitchen

1/2 batch of pizza dough (I used this one)

2 chicken sausage, diced (I used sun-dried tomato)

1 cup part-skim ricotta
1 oz. goat cheese, crumbled
8 sun dried tomatoes, chopped
1/2 cup part-skim mozzarella cheese, shredded
1/2 tsp. dried basil

1/2 tsp dried oregano

Marinara for dipping

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Combine goat cheese, ricotta and mozzarella in a bowl. Fold in tomatoes, spices, and diced sausage.

3. Roll out pizza dough on a floured surface. (I don't have a rolling pin, so I just used my fingers to gently push it into a round shape.) Place on a pizza pan or baking sheet, spread ricotta mixture over half, fold the other half over. Crimp edges to seal. Brush with olive oil and place in the oven.
4. Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until golden and puffed. Serve with marinara for dipping.