Pizza Rolls

          
         Who doesn't like pizza?  How about a pizza that's all in its own little bundle.  I am talking about pizza rolls.  Not those teeny, tiny, rubbery pieces of dough with some sort of weak filling that a frozen food company passes off as a pizza snack.  I am talking about a substantial dough with actual filling you can see and discern what is inside.  A pizza roll that you can prepare ahead of time and freeze for a future date.  A pizza roll you actually feel good about feeding to your family.

          You can use whatever filling you like in your pizza.  Just do not make it very wet, or runny.  The dough will become rubbery then after re-heating.  I do not use tomato sauce for example.  I use a tomato paste mixed with Italian spices.  You can also put no tomato paste, and just serve the rolls with sauce on the side.

           The pizza rolls I made today were just cheese and tomato paste for my picky son.

           The dough is the same as for the Stromboli, and it is the same technique up until the filling part.

Here are the ingredients again for the dough.

• 2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 7/8 to 1 1/8 cups warm water
• 2 tablespoons garlic oil (or olive oil)
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon Pizza Dough Flavor (optional but good)
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt

Put all the ingredients in your bread maker or knead by hand or with a stand mixer with the dough attachment.

If you are kneading by hand, let the dough rise for at least an hour.  It did take an hour and a half for my dough to rise to the point where I wanted it in my bread maker. 

Take your dough and roll it on a floured parchment paper on your baking sheet.  (I do it this way to save on clean up.)  Make sure to flour your dough, it is sticky!  Roll it into a rectangle and then use a pizza cutter to cut 2-3 inch strips, depending on how wide you want your rolls.  Here is how mine looked.

As you can see, I topped them with tomato paste mixed with Italian seasoning and mozzarella cheese.  You can of course use what topping you desire, just remember to not make it wet.  Now just fold the dough over to cover the filling.  For the wedges on the edges, I just rolled them up like mini stromboli.  Pinch your edges so the filling doesn't come out.  Brush the top with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and garlic powder.  Then allow to rise again for 30 minutes.

You can now preheat your oven to 400F

After the 30 minutes bake them for 15 minutes or so, when the crust turns light golden.  If the rolls are stuck to each other, carefully separate them.

Here are mine.  Look, you can see the filling!  Yummy, yummy!

A tip for defrosting after freezing.  This works for me.  Place the rolls in your oven set at 350F.  After 10 minutes take them out and slice them in half.  Then put them in the microwave for 20 seconds.  That works on getting all the cheese remelted well without anything drying out.