What's a Falzone?

It's usually necessity that's the mother of invention. Tonight it was excess. Excess pizza dough, that is.

I was rolling out the dough (thanks Trader Joe!) and got close to something resembling a circle except for a little extra bit. I trimmed that off and threw the pizza in the oven. Then I thought about what to do with that six-inch excess.

With a little the cheese, tomato sauce, mushrooms and olives still out, I thought about making a mini-pizza. Kinda like a silver dollar pancake, but more savory. But I realized that if I made a calzone, I could fit it on the pizza stone along with the real pizza.

I rolled it up, pinched it shut and popped it in the oven.

Only after taking it out of the oven did I realize that I may have invented something new: the finger calzone. Or, as I like to call it, the Falzone (which sounded better than the Calzinger, Fingone or Finzone).

In the calzone family, the Falzone is the opposite of the mammoth P'zone. It's more like a stuffed breadstick. For me, that's a plus, as I often think calzones have too much squirty, scalding sauce.

The only factor holding back the Falzone's widespread adoption is that it's pretty labor intensive for a hand-held item. Yet if the Pizza Powers That Be can create a crust that folds over the pizza, I'm optimistic they'll figure out a way. Maybe they can talk to the Twinkie people.