Italian Crescent Ring

About a month or so ago, my mom went to the beach for the weekend with Kenzie and Nick.  Rachel and I were going to join them after we got out of work, but before that could happen, Mom came down with a stomach bug.  They had to wait out the sickness before coming home, and we never ended up going up.  This resulted in leftover food that they had purchased expecting us to be spending the whole weekend at the beach house.  This leftover food included lots of cold cuts.  Before it could go bad, I decided to try out this recipe for dinner one night.  I had seen Italian crescent rings on Pinterest, and I was interested because I had made a breakfast crescent wreath before and thought it was simply a genius idea: use a can of refrigerated crescent dough, fill it with delicious things, and bake it.  It's like a cooler, much easier version of a calzone.

This Italian crescent ring is a riff on the Italian sub.  There's sliced salami, ham and capocollo, along with provolone cheese.  Then you spice things up with roasted red peppers and hot pepper rings.

Obviously with the plethora of meat, I didn't participate in the devouring of this crescent ring, but my family loved it.  Then I brought the leftovers to work and shared them with my coworkers, who ate it both hot and cold and all agreed that it was great.  If you want to take your Italian sub to the next level, this might be the recipe for you!

Recipe:

Italian crescent ring
from Pillsbury

Ingredients:
2 cans (8 ounces each) refrigerated crescent dinner rolls
1/2 cup well drained jarred roasted red peppers
8 slices provolone cheese, halved
1/3 pound deli sliced hot salami
1/4 pound deli sliced ham
1/4 pound deli sliced capocollo
1/2 cup well drained jarred hot pepper rings

Instructions:

1) Heat oven to 375 degrees.  Unroll both cans of dough; separate into 0 rectangles.  On engrossed 12-inch pizza pan, arrange rectangles in a ring so the short sides of the rectangles form a circle in the center.  The dough will overlap; half of each rectangle will hang of the edge of the pan.  Dough ring should look like a sun.

2) Spread roasted red bell peppers toward center of ring on bottom halves of rectangles.  Top with half of the cheese.  Layer salami, ham and capocollo slices over cheese.  Arrange pepper rings over top.  Cover with remaining half of cheese.

3) Bring each dough rectangle hanging over side of pan up and over stacked filling, tucking dough under bottom layer of dough to secure it.  Repeat around sandwich until entire filling is enclosed (some filling might show a little).  Sprinkle with black pepper.

4) Bake 18 - 22 minutes or until dough is golden brown and thoroughly baked.  Cool 5 - 10 minutes before cutting into serving slices.