Pizza Rolls!

I grew up on Totino’s pizza rolls.  This Super Bowl Sunday I figured I could try making something similar myself.  I only needed a little pizza sauce for these rolls and thought it would be a waste to open up a whole jar.  Dierbergs had tomato sauce on sale for 25 cents per can last week, so I transformed that into a pretty tasty marinara!

Pizza Rolls
Yield 16 rolls

3 tsp. yeast
1 Tb. sugar
1 cup hot water
2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. garlic powder
2 tsp. dried oregano
1/4 cup olive oil
3 cups flour
8 oz. mozzarella shredded, whole or sticks
1/3 cup marinara or pizza sauce

1.  Easy way:  Dump your sugar, hot water, salt, garlic powder, oregano and olive oil into your bread machine.  Dump the flour on top.  Make a little hole in the flour and add the yeast.  Select “Dough” cycle and hit “On”.  Boom, you’re done with the dough.

2.  The harder way:  Add your yeast, sugar and hot water to the stand mixer with the dough attachment on it.  Allow the yeast to eat the sugar for about 10 minutes.  Add your garlic powder, oregano, salt and olive oil.  Mix on low.  Add 1 cup of flour, mix to incorporate.  Add 1 cup flour, mix.  Add last 1 cup of flour, mix and let the mixer “knead” the dough for 5 minutes.  Grease a bowl and allow the dough rise until it doubles in size – about an hour.  Keep covered with a towel.

3.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Cut up your cheese balls or sticks if using them.  Remove the dough and divide it in to 16 pieces with a bench knife or pizza cutter.

4.  Roll the dough ball flat and place about 1 tsp. of the sauce in the middle.  Add about 1 Tb. of cheese.  You could add some pepperonis in there at this point, too.  Now, bring up the sides and crimp the edges until the ball looks like the photo below.

5.  Once you do all the rolls like this, you can park them (covered) in the fridge for 24 hours before baking.  Or go straight into the oven for 12-15 minutes.  The bottoms will be golden brown.

6.  Brush the tops with olive oil if you like.  I liked dipping mine in the extra sauce.  Yum!

Recipe from Heather Cristo

Pizza Sauce
yield 8 oz.

8 oz. tomato sauce
1/2 tsp.  salt (plus more to taste)
1/4 tsp. black pepper (plus more to taste)
1/2 tsp. dried parsley
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. onion powder
1/4 tsp. basil
1/2 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. Italian seasoning

I mixed that all up.  I think it needed a tad more salt and then it tasted perfect.  So, use your fingers or spoons to tell, but I thought it was pretty tasty for pantry pizza sauce.