Stuffed Pizza Sticks...

This week's Friday Night Pizza didn't come out shaped quite as intended, but thankfully that didn't interfere with just how tasty they ended up! These ridiculously easy Stuffed Pizza Sticks were actually supposed to be turned into pretzels, but they ended up being stuffed so full (a good thing!) that shaping them in one piece wasn't going to fly.

Working with the pound version of our whole-wheat pizza dough (yeah, I'm sure you guessed that already!), I divvied the hunk of dough into four pieces, then stretched each out into a rough rectangle. I didn't measure the actual size, but if I have to guess, it probably ended up being about 4 or 5 inches wide by 8 or 9 inches long.

On top of the rectangles, we scattered a mess of shredded mozzarella, seasoned each with a bit of dried basil, then added ample amounts of chopped pepperoni. I did opt for turkey pepperoni, mainly because we like that it isn't nearly as greasy, but use regular if you like. To keep all those ingredients inside of the sticks, fold the short ends in (kind of like when you roll up a burrito), then roll up the dough jelly-roll style and use your fingers to tightly pinch the seam together.

Rather than tossing them onto a heated stone, which we normally like to do with pizzas, the sticks went onto a baking sheet, where we brushed each with beaten egg to give the dough a rich golden color. Even without the shape, we wanted to keep with the pretzel theme, so just before they went into the oven, we sprinkled the top with a bit of coarse salt.

You can vary the filling as you like, using different cheeses, herbs and whatnot (a spinach, feta and garlic combo sounded good to us!)... just try not to go too crazy with the amounts or the sticks are likely to bust open. I had mine as is, but I warmed up a bowl of a garlicky marinara sauce we had in the freezer as Jeff requested such to use as a dipper. I think I'll to that too when we warm up the rest for lunch tomorrow!

Recipes
Stuffed Pizza Sticks