Stromboli for Me, Stromboli for You

For some really odd reason, I was reminiscing about my high school years back in Warsaw, Indiana. Perhaps it was the recent addition to my youth pastor's family (congrats, Ben and Misty on precious little Thaddeus!), but I started thinking about them, and this one particular youth group retreat where we had the most incredible stromboli ever!

Mark hasn't ever really been a big fan of stromboli - mainly because he's never had THIS stromboli. But I figured I needed to find a recipe similar to that of Misty's in order to really "wow" him! Of course, with Misty having JUST had a baby, I didn't think it was probably a good time to bother her with a recipe request, so I took it to the interwebz and found THIS little gem from AllRecipes.com, courtesy of Jude Mulvey of East Schodack, NY. It mainly stood out because it had the 4 ingredients I most remembered about Misty's stromboli: Salami, Ham, Pepperoni and Provolone cheese.

My first thought when I saw this recipe was, "Oh crap - it's already 2:30pm, and if I need to get frozen bread dough, I've got to have some time for it to thaw and rise by 6pm, which isn't much time - CRAP!! So I made a short list and hurried to HyVee to pick up the meat and frozen bread dough. I used the speed method to thaw it, which involved turning the oven on to 200, then turning it off, and adding a pan of boiling water on the lower rack, with the frozen bread loaves on the upper rack. It worked! Just remember to turn the oven off!!


I did nothing for the next 3 hours then, which was nice :)

Once 5:25pm hit, though, I was in full action! We had friends coming up at 6pm, and they didn't really know they were my guinea pigs, so I didn't want it to be late, cold and well...bad lol

I punched each roll of dough down separately, then tried to get it to roll out flat into a pseudo-rectangle, which wasn't easy.


Then, I covered it in layers of the meat and ham, beginning with Salami...


...and then ham...


...and then pepperoni...


...then provolone...


...and mozzarella...


...and then parmesan...


...and then topped it all off with the other spices (garlic, oregano, parsley and pepper).


I then took an egg and pastry brush, and brushed along all the edges to make sure they were sealed.


I then rolled it up, jelly-roll style,


then placed it on a prepared pan, brushed the top with egg, and stuck it in the oven at 350 for 25 minutes or until it was golden brown.



During the baking process, sometimes this happens, and you get a sneak peak at what's coming:


It was a HIT! Between 4 people, we finished about 1 1/2 rolls of the 2, and Mark and I finished off the other half for lunch today. This recipe was almost exactly like Misty's (I'd be interested to see her recipe, actually, to see how close they are!) I'm pretty sure this will become a Johnson staple from now on - YUM! But only a couple times a year, because my goodness - there was a LOT of cheese in there lol

So I leave you with the final product:



Thanks, Curt and Nancy, for being good sports! It's always fun to test out new recipes with friends :)