The sauce goes beside it, not inside it
Calzone
A folded pizza filled with whole-milk ricotta and mozzarella, with ham or without, and a cup of sauce on the side.
Sauce sealed inside a calzone does two things, both bad. It boils, which builds steam and either bursts the seam or leaves you with a soggy interior, and it makes the whole thing impossible to eat without wearing some of it. So ours goes in a cup on the side, hot, and you dip. Every calzone we have ever sent out has gone out this way.
Inside is ricotta and mozzarella in roughly equal parts. The ricotta is the same whole-milk one drained overnight that goes on the white pizza — a stabilised supermarket ricotta weeps in a sealed pocket and there is nowhere for the water to go.
There are three vents cut in the top. They are not decorative: they are how the steam leaves, and a calzone without them will find its own way out through the seam at the worst possible moment.
What goes on it
The ricotta
Whole-milk, drained overnight in a cloth, seasoned with black pepper.
The mozzarella
Whole-milk, roughly equal parts with the ricotta.
The additions
Cooked ham, or wilted and squeezed spinach, or nothing.
The sauce
A cup of the same uncooked crushed tomato, warmed, on the side.
How it is made here
Filled on one half
Filling on half the opened dough, a clear inch of bare dough left at the edge for the seal.
Sealed and crimped
Folded, pressed, then rolled and crimped. A pressed-only seal opens in the oven about one time in five.
Vented three times
Three cuts in the top skin before it goes in. This is not optional.
Sixteen to eighteen minutes
At 550°F until properly golden, then rested two minutes — the inside is far hotter than it looks.
Calzone — what it costs
- Ricotta & mozzarella$13
- With ham$15
- With spinach$14
Prices include every topping listed above. Extras are $3 for vegetables and $4 for meats. Prices change when our costs do; the menu here is the menu in the shop.
Before you order this
A shared flour kitchen, and what that rules out. Our kitchen handles wheat flour in open air all day, along with milk, eggs, soy, tree nuts and fish. Flour becomes airborne every time a dough ball is opened, and it settles on every surface in the room, including the peels, the oven floor, the cutting board and the wheel. We can tell you what we put on a pizza, and we will tell you honestly. We cannot tell you that anything leaving this kitchen is free of an allergen, and we will not say it. If a reaction would send you to hospital, this is not a safe kitchen for you, and we would far rather say so than take the order.
The kitchen is one room. Every pizza here is opened on the same bench, baked on the same floor and cut with the same wheel, and that is true of this one as much as any other. The pages on allergens and cross-contact and vegetarian, vegan and dietary questions set out plainly what we can and cannot tell you, including the things most shops leave you to assume.
The rest of the menu
Other things worth ordering
Spinach Roll
Spinach wilted with garlic and squeezed dry, rolled through pizza dough with mozzarella and baked until the spiral sets.
From $6.50
Chicken Roll
Grilled chicken thigh, mozzarella and a little roasted pepper rolled in dough and baked — the one that sells out first on a Friday.
From $7.50
Pepperoni Roll
Pepperoni and mozzarella coiled through dough with a sesame crust, so the fat renders into the bread as it bakes.
From $6.50Asked at the counter
Calzone — questions
Can you put the sauce inside?
No, and it is the one thing on this menu we simply will not do. It steams the inside, it risks bursting the seam, and it makes a worse calzone. The cup is right there.
Can I have pepperoni in it?
Yes, $4. It will not crisp in a sealed pocket — it will be soft, and that is the nature of the thing rather than a fault.
Why is it so hot inside?
Because a sealed pocket of cheese comes out of the oven well above the temperature of an open pizza and holds it. Give it two minutes. We have all learned this the hard way.
Twelve to fifteen minutes, and worth the wait
Order a pie
Telephone the shop and we will tell you honestly how long the kitchen is running before you commit to anything. Collection is always quicker than delivery and the pizza is always better for it. If you are ordering for a crowd, the catering page has the trays and the notice we need.