Panzerotto: Southern street food with a creamy heart

Panzerotto, also called calzone, is a modern southern street food with very ancient origins. But what is it and how is it done? Let's find out!

Panzerotto is a typical product of Southern Italian gastronomy with a typical crescent shape, an unmistakable aroma and flavour. Unique and engaging, like a hug from a loved one: this is the panzerotto for the many who have been lucky enough to taste it in the places of production.

Also called "calzone" (although with some differences) it is a modern street food , today rediscovered by the greatest master pizza chefs in Italy and in the greatest Italian pizzeria restaurants in the world. But what is it and what is its original recipe? Let's find out!

Panzerotto: what it is and its characteristics

Often trivialized as a "folded pizza", the panzerotto has its own particularity and its own preparation which determine its unmistakable characteristics.

It is a gastronomic rotisserie product made with the same dough as pizza and made up of a circle of dough filled with various fillings , then closed on itself to form a crescent and then fried or baked. Born in Southern Italy, it can be found from Lazio downwards.

While in Puglia and, more particularly, in Salento it is more commonly called "calzone", in Naples its preparation is still very popular and it is called "fried pizza". There's no need to get confused! In Naples the "panzarotto" is more properly a potato croquette and the "calzone" is just the one cooked in the oven.

How to prepare panzerotto: the recipe

1. First of all, let's prepare the filling : cut the mozzarella into cubes after letting it drain for a few hours (alternatively use mozzarella specifically for pizza).
2. In a bowl, mix the mozzarella and tomato puree. Add salt and oregano and a drizzle of EVO oil.
3. At this point let's dedicate ourselves to the dough. Dissolve the yeast in a little warm water and add the sugar and salt.
4. In a bowl, place the flour and dissolved yeast together with the rest of the warm water and start kneading. If you like, you can enrich the dough with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.
5. Continue kneading until you obtain a smooth and soft dough.
6. Now shape the dough into a loaf and divide it into pieces depending on how big you want to make the panzerotti. Turn the dough balls on the work surface until they form smooth balls.
7. Place them on a pastry board and, covered with a cloth, wait for them to rise for at least 2 hours or until they double in size.
8. Once leavened, take the frying pan and heat plenty of seed oil inside.
9. Roll out the balls with a rolling pin, giving them a round shape and a thickness of about 2 mm.
10. Place a spoonful of filling in the center. Be careful not to fill them too much otherwise when we close them the filling will come out.
11. Once the crescent-shaped panzerotti have been closed, make sure the edges are well sealed and trim them with a wheel or knife.
12. Cook the panzerotti in boiling oil that has reached 170°C. Dip 1 or 2 at a time and turn them often to prevent them from burning (it will take about 4 minutes for them to be ready).
13. When they are golden, drain them on a sheet of absorbent paper.

And here is a video recipe very similar to our preparation, we simply halved the doses. Furthermore, in these steps the leavening times vary (in the video they leave the dough to rise before dividing the dough into smaller loaves). Try both versions and tell us how you like it better:

storage

We recommend eating this street food at the moment , as frying will tend to make the panzerotto much less appetizing shortly after preparation. We therefore advise against storage, as well as freezing in the freezer.

The history of the panzerotto

The history of panzarotto, or panzerotto, is very ancient. Historians think that it was born from the tradition of the poorest Apulian cuisine when, with the leftover bread dough, these small crescents were cooked with pieces of cheese and tomatoes.

It is thought that the first panzerotto was born in Bari around the 16th century, from the creativity of a baker who had some leftover bread and had the idea of ​​forming a "small folded pizza". Hence the name "panzerotto" which seems to derive from "panza" meaning "belly" and refers to its characteristic swelling that is created during cooking. While in Bari they are called "panzerotti", in Salento they are more commonly referred to as "calzones".

Their most typical recipe involves cooking them in sunflower seed oil. The dough for the fried calzones of the Salento recipe is made exclusively of durum wheat flour. No potatoes or other flours are added, as is commonly done in the making of Bari or Neapolitan panzarotti.

The calories in panzerotti

Panzerotti are a complete dish: in fact inside we can find the carbohydrates and proteins of the cheese, as well as the vitamins and mineral salts of the tomatoes. A portion of classic fried panzerotto with tomato and mozzarella has around 400 calories . They decrease if, instead of frying them, you opt for slow cooking in the oven (and in this case we are talking about calzone ).

Difference between panzerotto and calzone

The short answer is that the difference between panzerotto or calzone lies only in the cooking method : the former is in fact fried while the latter is baked.

Some aesthetes of Italian cuisine, however, would have a lot to laugh about this "hasty" explanation, therefore it seems right to us to also give other points of view that deal with the differences of these two delicious treasures of stuffed pasta.

• Although the dough is almost the same, it seems that, according to some, the calzone needs more leavening time (in this case not even two folds look bad) to increase the softness and lightness of the finished product.
• The cooking method also leads to a different result in terms of chewiness: the panzerotto is crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, while the calzone is soft and fragrant.
• The original panzerotto recipe seems to be the Apulian one, seasoned with tomato, mozzarella and oregano. Its different baked twin , however, first brought with it the experimentation of different and varied fillings.