Stromboli

This week's entry is brought to you by the Bloomington, IN visitors' bureau.

Welcome to dinner-and-a-movie night. Tonight's feature is Breaking Away accompanied by home-made stromboli in the style of Nick's English Hut in Bloomington.

As far as I can tell (by searching the internet and reading the Wikipedia article linked above) in most places stromboli is a delicate-looking Italian turnover sandwich. If you are in Bloomington, stromboli is a giant pizza sandwich on a hoagie roll whose only ambition is to drip tomato sauce on your pants (see above photo). We went with the second definition.

Preheat oven to 350

Slice rolls in half. We used hoagie sandwich bread, but anything in the Italian bread family should be fine. Slather on a thick coat of pizza sauce to the bottom half of your bread. Top with whatever pizza toppings you prefer; we used green pepper, tomato, and mushroom but in future I would like to add in onion (if you are non-vegetarian, Italian meats are more traditional). On the top half of your bread, pile as much cheese as you dare-- mozzarella is good.

Bake on a cookie sheet until cheese is bubbly and browning-- I think our sandwiches took in the area of 10 minutes. 

I think we'll be eating stromboli again in the near future. It's super easy and fast and we almost always have leftover pizza sauce and toppings after we make pizza. Stromboli is best paired with jelly donuts from Square Donuts on Walnut St. in Bloomington.