Quick Vegan Air Fryer Calzones with Premade Pizza Dough (No Oven Needed)

Make a quick dinner with this vegan air fryer calzone recipe! Uses premade dough and cooks in 8 minutes flat with no oven needed. Features a flavorful smoked paprika crust.

My boyfriend and I tried to make a 5 gallon pot of beer once, but shattered our stovetop when doing so. I had to think fast, since we were starving and couldn’t use our stovetop anymore. 🥲 So, I made a vegan calzone! It actually ended up turning out so good, I had to share the recipe with you all!

Recipe Details

• Prep Time: 24 min
• Cook Time: 8 min
• Total Time: 40 min
• Yield: 4 calzones

Ingredients

• 1 ball of vegan premade pizza dough (can find it at Walmart)
• ¼ cup of all purpose flour
• 2 tbsp of olive oil (one for inner part of the calzone, one for outer crust)
• 2 vegan frozen sausages
• salt, oregano, precut-garlic to taste
• handful of spinach leaves
• ½ vegan mozzarella cheese
• tube of tomato paste (since you won’t use the whole tube)
• smoked paprika, tumeric, garlic powder - For the outer part of the calzone

Instructions

• Throw in the vegan sausage into the air fryer and cook to package instructions. At the halfway point, you can speed up the cook time by cutting it in half. It’s also good to cook the sausage first, so that it preheats the air fryer for the calzones themselves!
• While the sausage is cooking, grab two baking sheets and throw all purpose flour on each pan so that when you flatten the dough to make the 2 calzones on each pan, it doesn’t stick to the pans. The baking sheets are mainly just to keep the area clean, making sure flour and oil doesn’t get everywhere, making for a speedy clean up at the end!
• Remove the vegan pizza dough from the packaging and divide the pizza dough into 4 equal pieces.
• Flatten each piece into a longer oval onto the baking sheet, coating each side with a little bit of flour. Try to flatten the dough as thin as you can get it without tearing (~1-2mm and slightly translucent when you hold the dough up in the light).
• Once you’re done flattening the dough, add a little bit more flour beneath it, just so if it warms up as you add toppings, that it doesn’t stick to the pan or tear.
• With a spoon, drop on a spoonful or two of olive oil and spread it all over the dough up to the edges. You can use the spoon to flatten the dough more too if you see it’s bunching up again.
• Add salt and oregano to the olive oil-covered dough (the salt is there since the tomato paste isn’t salted)
• Add pre-chopped garlic to the dough and spread thin (you can also use garlic powder if you don’t have prepped garlic)
• Add tomato paste (or 2-3 spoonfuls of crushed tomato puree) and spread thin.
• Add vegan cheese and top it with some spinach leaves.
• Once the vegan sausage is done, take it out of the air fryer and chop it into small pieces, add the pieces also on top of the calzone.
• Add more vegan cheese to keep your toppings in check.
• You can also add anything else to the calzone, but I would recommend keeping the water-content low if you can.
• Fold over the oval such that it looks like an empanada, then close it by pinching the sides. You can prevent spilling by folding the edges over and crimp / roll them to create a decorative, braided seal. Ideally keep the seal up, so no juices leak into the air fryer.
• Spoon a little bit of olive oil on each calzone top, then sprinkle on tumeric, smoked paprika, and garlic powder (this adds some pizazz).
• Pop the calzones into the pre-heated (from the sausage) air fryer on 400F and cook for a total of 8 min. Flip the calzones halfway to slightly more than halfway of the cook time so that both sides cook evenly. It is essential that you flip halfway! Do not flip if they aren’t fully crunchy on the top half, or it could break. If they are sticking together, don’t worry, just flip them and they should unstick as the flipped side cooks. Flipping ensures that bottom gets cooked through enough and not be soft or still wet.
• You’ll know the calzones are done when the crust on both sides is crispy and slightly golden brown.
• Repeat once more for the other 2 calzones.