Adventures in baking (continued)... Pizza Rolls!

After something of a hiatus since my last baking effort, I turned to humble pizza to see what I could come up with.

Inspired by a 'pin' on Pinterest, I fancied making pizza rolls which looked glorious. Seems in the States you can buy every conceivable kind of dough from the supermarket ready-made: frozen or in a can. Here, in miserable old blighty there's sod all (at least Tesco delivery doesn't sell it) – so I had to make this from scratch. Granted, it's a bit more work but I did feel very proud and smug afterwards.

After making the dough, kneading it for five minutes and leaving it for 1.5 hours (to expand, don't you know) I rolled out the dough ready for the filling. Mmm! Filling!

Today's filling was pepperoni slices, mozarella (grated), mature cheddar (grated) and tomato puree. The puree was slapped on first, with the meat and cheese following on swiftly after. I then rolled the whole thing up to make a sort of elongated pasty thing. It was only after I'd sealed it up that I realised I should have included a sprinkle of herbs (must remember that next time) as I think that technically counts as one of your five a day ... or something.

I made two of the beauties and here they are:

Hmm Not exactly uniform batches, but hey this is my first time. I call the top one long-ee and the bottom one fat-ee.
I brushed the tops with milk and sprinkled on some garlic powder. Don't know why, just seemed like the right thing to do.

I whacked them in the oven for half an hour with great anticipation. I love pizza of almost any variety. They are divine (even the cheap Tesco value ones – I could eat loads of 'em), and makes me think maybe God is Italian.

Anyhoo, after the alloted time, my pizza rolls were ready!

I think they look like bloated burritos. Long-ee exploded while fat-ee managed to contain the ingredients. Well done fat-ee!

Well, the long one expelling its filling was quite a traumatic site. All that filling! It was mostly cheese, which I would say is the glue that holds these things together so that was a shame. Also, the baking parchment I put them on decided to stick to the underside of the rolls, which was annoying because we had to peel it off (which was very tricky). Must remember next time to grease the paper first! Despite all this, the family seemed to enjoy it, so that's good.

Fat-ee was meant as a spare for another meal so I'm going to chuck him in the freezer and hope he keeps. Maybe he'll have a lot more cheese inside which might improve the pizza roll experience.

Overall, it was a dead simple thing to cook. I do enjoy making my own dough and this one was nice and gooey and fluffy. The roll tasted good, I'd definitely have one again. I think next time I will use more tomato sauce (to add a bit more moistness), add herbs and make sure the baking paper is greased. I might also play around with different meats for the filling.

Next time, however, I might just make a normal pizza!