Three easy and exciting ways to use leftover pizza dough...

 
Whatcha gonna do with leftover pizza dough? In my house, we just make more pizza. Breakfast pizza. Lunch pizza.
 
Seriously. We work at home. If I decide I want lunch pizza, it takes about 10 minutes of active prep to make a pizza. The rest of it—like preheating the oven and warming the dough to room temp—that’s all passive time.

When you’ve got a simple system for making great pizza whenever you want with the oven you already have, lunch pizza is no more difficult than making a sandwich or a salad.
 
But you’re not here to listen to me evangelize that pizza isn’t hard to do when you develop a system while I pretend I’m not huckstering for my book.
 
 
Instead, you want to know what to do with that leftover pizza dough. Perhaps you’re (perish the thought) tired of pizza.
 
(By the way, the number of people who are searching for ways to use pizza dough outpaces all other subjects here by over 300%. It seemed prudent to help y’all figure out what to do with all that dough that’s apparently piling up.)
 
Here are three things you can do with that dough that are pretty simple, scalable, and don’t really require a recipe.
 
Hence, there will be no recipes. Just simple instructions—which is how recipes used to be written back in the good old days.
 
Example: Lafcadia Hearn’s famous, landmark work, considered the first New Orleans cookbook. It’s called La Cuisine Creole: A Collection of Culinary Recipes From Leading Chefs and Noted Creole Housewives, Who Have Made New Orleans Famous for Its Cuisine.
 
 
The title of the book is almost longer than some of the recipes.
 
Check out this wildly popular recipe for “Calf Or Pig Brains Fried”…
 
“Wash the brains in salt water, and wipe dry and dip in
wheat flour or in beaten egg and then in bread crumbs.
Fry in butter or lard, and season with pepper, salt and
lemon sliced.”
 
Of course, I know a lot of people for whom a pig brain recipe would be a simple three words:
 
 
“Throw them out.”
 
That aside, we’ll make an effort to a) keep instructions brief, and b) avoid any such recipes for polarity response here.
 
After all, everything here uses pizza dough. Who doesn’t love that?
 
We’re going to talk about three simple things that are easy to make:
 
1. Bread
2. Pot Pie
3. Stromboli
 
Without further ado…
 
 
Damn Easy Bread
 
This is as brainless a recipe as there ever was. You already have the dough. Simply heat your oven and stone or steel to 450 degrees, pop the dough onto the steel, and you’ve got bread.

These loaves of crusty bread were made with leftover pizza dough 


If this sounds familiar, I wrote about it a few months ago. I remain an enthusiastic proponent of this bread because it’s so simple, it makes you realize how we're sometimes overthinking things.
 
Got dough? Make bread! Yay!
 
Yes, the resulting loaf is a somewhat ugly loaf. But who cares? Not everything needs to look like the prize-winning entrée on Chopped.
 
Shape has no taste—and the taste here is brilliant.  
 
 
The first time I did this, I barely thought about it.
 
I literally turned on the oven, pulled a dough ball out of the fridge, let the dough warm up during the hour of preheat, then stretched the dough into an oblong shape, tossed it straight onto the steel, and let it bake for 15 minutes.
 
It’s some of the best bread I’ve ever made.

 
Here’s the basic recipe:

• Place the baking steel or stone on the top third of the oven, and preheat at 450 degrees for one hour.

 

• As the oven heats, let the dough come to room temp.

 

• When the oven is ready, stretch the dough into an oblong flat, slide it onto a dusted peel, then slide it onto the hot steel.

 

• Bake for 15 minutes, rotating the loaf 180 degrees at the 7-minute mark.

 

• The bread is ready when the loaf’s internal temperature reaches 190 degrees. (You can check the temp using a digital meat thermometer.)

 

• Remove the loaf from oven to a cooling rack.

 
I was going to say that your bread can look like the photos here. But that will require that your dough has been fermented. If you look closely and see all those microblisters, that indicates fermentation and tasty bread is afoot.
 
If your dough hasn’t fermented, no big deal. Just use it as is. It’ll still be an excellent loaf of bread. Grab some good Irish butter, grab that loaf, and go sit in a corner by yourself, grunting and inhaling.
 
 
Savory Anything Pot Pie
 
I’m a sucker for pot pie. I’d been thinking that a good way to use up leftover dough, sauce and sausage would be to make a kind of pizza bowl and stretch a piece of pizza dough across the top, then bake it.
 
Suddenly, someone shoved that very thing into my face and I was hooked.

This gumbo pot pie was a sensation and my wife fell upon it like a wild animal.


It happened at the 2023 Pizza & Pasta Northeast convention, where Melissa Rickman actually served it as part of a demonstration on how to use up surplus ingredients.
 
Ms. Rickman is co-founder of Wholly Stromboli in Fort Lupton Colorado. If I remember correctly, her pot pie contained sauce, sausage and cheese. She combined it all in a ramekin as pie filling, then stretched a piece of pizza dough across the top.
 
 
The first pot pie I made was a little different.
 
I had some leftover duck and andouille gumbo, and thought it would make a killer pot pie.
 
In retrospect, the one thing I would have done differently is separated out the gumbo broth from the solids, then thickened the broth some more before re-adding the solids.
 
(I’ve done this kind of thing before when putting gumbo and soups on pizza. I take a slotted spoon and remove the meat and other solids. Then, I take some broth and flour, make a slurry of it, stir it into the rest of the heated broth, make it like a thick gravy, then stir the solids back in. It’s easy, and it gives it more of a savory pie-filling consistency.)
 
Thickened or not, you could do this with soups, stews, gumbo, étouffée, chicken cacciatore, shrimp creole, meat loaf and gravy with peas, Thanksgiving leftovers—whatever. So long as there’s some sauce, gravy, or other thickened liquid involved.
 
Also, cheese was optional. I had some fresh mozzarella that required a home, so half the pies contained cheese. Either way, it was great.

Cheese-pull pie optional (but fun)


Here’s how my Pizza Crust Pot Pie came together…
 
This is an insanely simple project. It unfolded thusly:

• About 90 minutes before eating, I took the gumbo and the pizza dough out of the fridge.

 

• About 45 minutes before, I pre-heated the oven to 375 degrees. (The steel was still in there from the last pizzas, and I let it heat as well.)

 

• When the oven was ready, I had four Pyrex 6-ounce custard cups out and waiting. I also had a Pyrex 10-ounce custard cup handy.

 

• I spooned gumbo into each 6-ounce cup, almost to the top.

​Gumbo in a custard cup

• I stretched the dough enough to cut four rounds, using the larger custard cup as a template for cutting the rounds.

 

• Taking one round of dough to a filled 6-ounce cup, I draped the dough over the cup and pressed it tight around the edges.

 

• Each full cup was covered with a dough round.

 

• I put the four miniature pot pies onto a baking sheet and into the oven on the hot steel, and set a timer for 12 minutes.

• I rotated the baking sheet at 6 minutes, and monitored them to make sure the crust didn’t get too brown.

• Once they were sufficiently brown, I removed them and allowed them too cool just enough that I could safely ravage them with a spoon.

Baked gumbo pies singing the siren song of pizza-dough crust
 
​
And ravage them we did.
 
Crust and gravy and duck meat, oh my.

It helps that this was a really good gumbo, if I do say so. It was also expensive, containing several pounds of duck breast and a roux made with duck fat.
 
The morning after the night we served it, someone literally called up and said, “I woke up thinking about that gumbo. It’s the best I’ve ever had, and I was born here.” (Not a bad compliment for a carpetbagging Yankee in Mississippi.)
 
If you’ve got anything in your fridge that smacks of a potential pie filling, figure out how you might like to configure it.
 
You could do as I did, using several small cups or ramekins. You could use some larger, shallow bowls. You could use a pie plate. Whatever works.
 
This is less science than it is improvisation. Have fun. It’s hard to screw up.

Cross-section of an Italian cold-cuts stromboli


Holy Hoagie Stromboli!

​This will make me unpopular with a segment of the population, but I‘m going to say it: one way to look at a stromboli is as an Italian hoagie wrapped in crust.
 
When you look at it that way, it changes the way you think about it.
 
Just remember that we’re talking specifically about the meats and cheeses, along with some low-moisture spreads.
 
You don’t want fresh tomatoes in there or fresh iceberg. Those are too wet, and will compromise the integrity of the stromboli.
 
 
And who really wants hot, wet lettuce?
 
But if you want to use sun-dried tomatoes and spinach, that should work out OK.
 
There’s not much moisture in the sun-dried tomatoes. But when they’re packed in oil, you want to make sure they’re well drained.
 
And a bag of frozen chopped spinach that’s been thawed and well-drained would work out just fine. I use it on pizza a lot without hazardous effect.
 
I always take the thawed spinach and wrap it in paper towel to squeeze out the excess moisture.
 
 
I have made stromboli where I was a little too cavalier with my spreads and meats.
 
Dry-cured meats work great.
 
Salami, pepperoni, coppa, prosciutto, things like that.
 
But I’ve used wet-cured ham (i.e., your standard deli ham), and the result is a bit juicy.
 
I’ve also used commercial hoagie spread, which worked out OK.
 
But when I used homemade hoagie spread, it was rather wet and the resulting stromboli exhibited a fair amount of leakage.
 
 
Just be cautious about high-moisture fillings, and it should all work out.
 
Otherwise, just use your imagination on this one. Again, this is less cooking and more assembly.
 
Here’s one of my personal favorite filling combinations for a stromboli:
 
Deli-sliced ham
Salami
Pepperoni
Provolone
Sliced fresh mozzarella
shredded parmigiano
chopped sun-dried tomatoes
hoagie spread
fresh basil
 
Also required:
 
Pizza dough ball
One egg for an egg wash (optional)
Sesame seeds for sprinkling (optional)

Stacked ingredients of an unbaked cold-cut stromboli


Here are the dance steps involved…
 
If using a typical, wet-cured deli ham, you might try blotting it dry, then throwing it briefly into a hot skillet to eliminate some of the moisture. Otherwise, try using a dry-cured ham product like prosciutto.

• 90 minutes before baking, take the dough out of the fridge to let it warm up.

 

• 60 minutes before baking, place the steel or stone inside the oven and preheat it to 400 degrees.

 

• Lightly oil a sheet of parchment paper. (You can use a lightly floured surface and drag the assembled stromboli onto a dusted peel. But after 1,000+ pizzas, even I find that daring. Up to you and your fortitude vs. your pucker factor.)

 

• Stretch the dough into a rectangle. My dough balls are usually around 360 grams, which easily stretches to 8 x 12 inches. I don’t know how big your dough ball is. But don’t go for a specific size. Go for a dough rectangle that is comfortably thick enough to support the fillings.

 

• Along the center of the dough, layer provolone, ham, a couple of tablespoons of chopped sun-dried tomatoes (drained), salami, pepperoni, shredded parmigiano, hoagie spread (drained), fresh mozzarella slices and fresh basil leaves.

• Take one long side of the dough and pull it over. Repeat with the other long side of the dough. You should now have a long, neat package with messy ends. I pinch the ends together, and tuck them neatly underneath.

 

• I like doing an egg wash on the stromboli. Just scramble a raw egg and brush it onto the stromboli. Sprinkle it with sesame seeds if you like.

 

• Slide the stromboli-laden parchment onto a peel, and launch it onto the steel or stone inside the oven. Sometimes, the stromboli might be long enough that it must go in at an angle.

 

• I set the timer for 30 minutes, rotating the stromboli at 15 minutes. At 20 minutes, I start paying attention to how brown it’s getting.

 

• When the crust is appropriately brown, remove to a cooling rack. Allow to cool before savaging.

Baked and seeded stromboli--but the real fun is inside!


Slice and enjoy!
 
You can serve it warm. You can serve it cold. I do both, unless there are guests and the warm stromboli disappears as if beset by a biblical swarm of locust.
 
In fact, as I’ve been writing this, I’ve been enjoying some leftover stromboli briefly warmed in the microwave. (Can’t really do that to pizza without subsequently crying.)
 
And yes, the steps for this one are somewhat more involved than the previous two.
 
But they can be distilled to this: layer all the meats, cheese and garnishes in the center of the dough. Pull the sides of the dough up and over to create a cylinder of meat and cheese. Tuck the ends under. Brush on an egg wash and sprinkle sesame seeds if desired. Bake at 400 degrees for about a half an hour. Cool, slice and enjoy.
 
 
Next time, we will return to some more pizza-centric discussion.
 
In the meantime, keep slinging those pies, rolling the strombolis, potting the pies and bumbling the breads. And if the creek don’t rise, and if the good Lord’s willing, and there ain't no meltdown, we’ll do it all over again after Election Day.

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