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Stromboli
This direct Stromboli recipe uses a refrigerated pizza dough. Stuffed with Italian cold cuts and cheeses, it's a satisfying finger food at its best. Serve with warm marinara sauce.
This direct kitchen-made Stromboli recipe uses a refrigerated pizza dough. Stuffed with Italian cold cuts and cheeses, it is a satisfying finger food at its best. Serve with warm marinara sauce.
Our husband loves Stromboli and we don’t think we made his favorite food often enough. We are not sure why we have been negligent on making this direct Stromboli for so long.
We have been making every food on the planet including many western recipes, but making Stromboli has not occurred until now.
All these years we have been busy perfecting our Kimchi recipes or searching and trying out far-far-away exotic foods, but making Stromboli (which is unfortunately NOT our favorite) didn’t quite fell into our ever *must try* recipe list.
Stromboli is not difficult to make at all. If you know how to make the *pig in a blanket*, which basically is a hotdog wrapped in a bread dough, you can easily make this without much fuss. The only problem we encountered was that it was hard to find the various cured Italian pork in the middle of tropical land where pork product is considered “non-Halal”.
This Italian inspired savory bread finger food uses cold cuts like salami, ham and pepperoni. Some likes to add sausage, sauteed peppers and onions on top but we like to stick with “meat & cheese only” request from our protein loving husband. We had to make fresh pizza dough for our Stromboli, but a store bought frozen pizza dough would be a great choice as well.
Take a look how easily we put them all together even with a braided look on the outside. Fancy-schmancy!
Ingredients you’ll need for Stromboli
- pizza dough: store-bought or kitchen-made
- ham, salami, & pepperoni
- provolone & mozzarella cheese
- fresh basil leaves, optional
- olive oil
- oregano
- jarred marinara sauce
How the dish comes together
First, roll out your pizza dough about 11″x13″ or so. No need to be exact.
Using your rolling pin, transfer the dough on to a baking pan.
Layer your choice of meats in the center. We used ham and salami, couldn’t find the pepperonis, so our Stromboli will be pepperoni-less… 🙁
Layer cheese (provolone and mozzarella) on top and place a few basil leaves. It is our duty to feed our family “vegetable”.
We added some Swiss cheese since we had a few slices on hand.
Cut each side of pizza dough to make 1-inch strips with a knife or a pair of scissor.
Fold the top end first, then bring the strips from each side to make criss-cross pattern one strip at a time.
When it comes to the other end, fold the end and finish the final 1-2 last strips to secure.
Kind of like that. We found braiding is so amusing that we want to braid everything from now on.
Drizzle a little EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) and sprinkle oregano. Bake in hot oven (400˚F) for about 15 minutes or until it forms nice golden brown crust. (Our pizza dough has semolina flour in it, which helps create beautiful golden crust without any egg wash.)
DO NOT forget to serve the Stromboli with warm marinara sauce to dip in.
Our poor husband who’s been putting up with us for 17 years (and willing to do whole lot longer through eternity) enjoyed this Stromboli for lunch. We had a nice dinner at Mandarin Oriental Hotel that night to celebrate our marriage.
As we were staring at the braiding work on our Stromboli, a thought came to our mind.
‘A strong marriage is like this braiding work. Its intertwined cooperation and commitment will support each other to keep everything safe inside.’
What a profound wisdom coming out from just looking at a piece of Stromboli? Food is not just food. It can give you valuable life lessons. Don’t you agree?
We better start lecturing our kids to learn their lesson by staring at tomorrow’s dinner, the chicken! Buon Appetito!
- Yield: 3
- Prep: 25 minutes
- Cook: 15 minutes
- Total: 40 minutes
Ingredients
- a large size pizza dough
- 8-10 slices ham
- 8-10 slices salami
- 8-10 slices pepperoni
- 4-6 slices provolone cheese
- 4-6 slices mozzarella cheese
- 8-10 basil leaves
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp oregano
- 1 cup warm marinara sauce, to dip
Method
- Preheat oven to 400ºF
- Roll out a pizza dough to form a thin rectangular crust, about 11″x13″, and place the crust on a baking pan lined with a parchment paper.
- Layer slices of ham, salami, and pepperoni as a single row in the center of crust. Layer cheeses over meats and place basil leaves on top.
- Using a knife or a pair of scissor, cut either sides of crust next to the meat & cheese filling to make several 1" wide strips. Fold-in the each end part of the crust toward the filling. Using one strip at a time, lay each strip in criss cross pattern to cover the filling.
- Drizzle olive oil over the crust and sprinkle oregano. Bake for 15 minutes or until the crust turns golden brown. Cool down a little and slice. Serve hot with warm marinara sauce to dip in.
