Pizza Dough Sandwiches with Zucchini and Provolone

Making good dough is easy. Stretching that same dough into a thin pizza skin, topping it with wet ingredients, and launching it into a hot pizza oven is not. Even after stretching and launching thousands of pizzas in my life, I’ll bake off the occasional “I wasn’t making pizza—this was always meant to be a calzone” pie.

That’s why I love recipes that are pizza-adjacent, but don’t require nearly as many difficult learned skills. This recipe uses pizza dough (homemade or store-bought), but rather than requiring hand-stretching, you use a rolling pin to roll it into an even circle and bake it un-topped, effectively ridding you of the most difficult steps involved in making a pizza.

A panuozzo is a sandwich invented in the 80s in Naples. It’s made by baking an un-topped slipper-shaped flat of pizza in a pizza oven until it chars and puffs like pita, splitting that dough, and stuffing it with a variety of fillings—Italian meats, cheeses, and vegetables.

More recently, I’ve seen a bunch of pizza-makers across social media making a similar but distinct sandwich by stretching out a round of pizza dough, brushing it with olive oil, folding it in half, and baking it. The oil keeps the two halves from sticking together and the dough becomes its own kind of flatbread—blistered and charred on the outside, steamy and tender within—ready to be split open and stuffed.

It’s a technique I’ve taken to using at home with a whole range of sandwich stuffings (including a recent version with bologna (AKA Freedom Mortadella), arugula-pistachio pesto, and burrata), making for easy, hand-held meals that can please a variety of eaters (important when you’ve got a couple of kids and their friends to feed).

This version, with roasted zucchini and provolone, feels simple—nothing but pizza dough, sliced zucchini, oregano, garlic, salt, pepper, olive oil, a dash of lemon and fresh basil—but really highlights how the high heat of a pizza oven (I made this using my Ooni Koda 2 Pro) can transform simple ingredients into something complex and deeply satisfying.

It’s not just the dough that benefits from the heat. Zucchini in the ripping heat of a pizza oven is a completely different beast from zucchini roasted in a standard oven. The high heat allows it to get deeply caramelized and lightly charred around its cut faces and edges while still maintaining a juicy bit in the center. None of the mushiness issues that roasted zucchini often faces. I like to roast it in a pre-heated cast iron pan with olive oil and a sprinkle of oregano, salt, and pepper.

Before stuffing it into the sandwich, I layer it with a few slices of provolone cheese, letting the cheese melt over the zucchini and hit the bottom of the pan, giving you those deliciously browned, frizzled, frico-like bits that add bursts of flavor to your bites.

Folded Pizza Dough Sandwiches with Zucchini and Provolone

Every recipe I publish here is personally tested, tasted, and approved.

What I like about this recipe:

• The high heat of a pizza oven delivers bread that is puffy, crisp, and charred with a tender, chewy cloud-like interior.

• Roasting the zucchini in the same pizza oven streamlines prep, simplifying your lunch or dinner plans.

Yield: 2 large zucchini sandwich, serving 3-4

Active Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes, plus time for the pizza dough to proof and rest.

Notes: You can use store-bought pizza dough for this recipe. To shape and proof the dough, form 250g (1/2 pound) pieces of dough into balls, set on a floured or oiled work surface, cover each with an overturned bowl, and allow to rise until roughly doubled in size, about 2 hours. (see my recipe for Basic No-Knead Neapolitan Pizza Dough for detailed instructions).

Ingredients

500g (about 1 pound) homemade or store-bought pizza dough, split in half and shaped for rolling (see note)

Extra-virgin olive oil (I use the excellent oil from Primis)

1 large zucchini (about 12 ounces; 330g), cut into ½-inch slices on a bias

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

A couple of cloves of garlic, finely minced

A sprinkle of dried oregano

2 ounces (55g) sliced sharp or mild Provolone cheese

Half a lemon

Some fresh basil leaves

Steps

1. Preheat a pizza oven (such as the Ooni Koda 2 Pro) to 900F (or as hot as possible, see note).

2. Working on a lightly floured surface with one piece of dough at a time, use a rolling pin to roll the dough out a 12-inch circle. Drizzle or brush the top surface of the dough circle with olive oil. Fold it in half and gently rub the two halves together to spread the oil around.

3. Transfer to the oven and bake, rotating occasonally, until the dough is puffed with a few dark brown spots, a few minutes. Remove from the oven and cook second batch of folded dough. Set the baked bread aside.

4. Place a large cast iron skillet or aluminum baking sheet inside and let preheat for a few minutes. Remove it from the oven, drizzle with a few tablespoons of olive oil, then add the zucchini slices. Season with salt, pepper, garlic, and oregano, and stir and toss to coat. Spread the zucchini into an even layer (it’s OK if the slices overlap). Transfer to the oven. Roast the zucchini, stirring and flipping it occasionally, until well-browned and lightly charred on the edges, 3 to 4 minutes total.

5. Remove the pan from the oven and arrange the zucchini into two piles, approximately the length of the bread. Top with provolone and return to oven until the cheese is melted and lightly caramelized where it has dripped onto the pan. 

6. Open the two bread pockets and, using a spatula transfer the zucchini and cheese mixture to the center of each sandwich, making sure to scrape any browned and crusty bits and include them. Finish each with a little squeeze of lemon and a few torn basil leaves. Fold the sandwich closed. Cut in half, and serve.