Second Hand Shelf Calzone and Tiger Loaf Pizza

 

Sometimes I only buy the food in the Co-op that's discounted, displayed near the till and known to us as the 'second hand shelf', yes the marked down food on it's sell by date. You see it's an invention test set by the supermarket staff and it's set for us.

Italians have lots of use for slightly stale bread, panzanella salad, in the wonderful Tuscan soup that's ribollita, and even as poor mans parmesan - where breadcrumbs are sprinkled over pasta instead of crumbs of cheese. The Spanish make migas, a breakfast dish of fried stale bread with ham, black pudding and eggs.

We give it to the birds.

Anyway reviving slightly stale bread is easy, (and for these recipes it must be a day or two over) - just brush it with some milk, so it becomes ever so slightly damp, maybe not all the way through, or wet it with water and squeeze it dry, but milk works better. A marked down loaf will give you a better deep crust crunchy pizza or sort of calzone than any you can buy. And come six o clock supermarkets give their lovely bread away.

So armed with tiger bread , mozzarella, spring onions and a punnet of mushrooms for less than £1, it's time to make some quick tea.  A bacon, mushroom, mozzarella, and parmesan hot sub.

Fry your chopped bacon to your liking, add a chopped clove of garlic, season, remove.

The trick with a mushroom filling is to really get the mushrooms cooked, slice all of them and fry in a little oil for a while, they must give up all their liquid, they will shrink a lot. Add a big splash of tomato puree and then fry a moment and add back your bacon, stir and fry for a few more minutes. Put the mixture on your milk dampened bread, put some chopped mozzarella and parmesan cheese on top, wrap in foil and bake for twenty - thirty minutes.

Serve with some basic tomato sauce as a good calzone should be.

When I make pizza's like shown I don't wrap them in foil. Decorate them as you please and enjoy.

So there you are, announce to the people that live in your house that it's pizza night, and as they peer at the takeaway menus, deciding what to have and from whom to order, calmly slice loaves in half....