What is the West Virginia Pepperoni Roll, you might be asking? Well, it’s a wonderful, simple combination of pepperoni (sticks or slices) and dough. Some you will find today will have the addition of sauce and mozzarella cheese, but the authentic ones only had pepperoni.
The roots of the pepperoni roll go back to the West Virginia coal mines. When the Italian immigrants came to work there, they would bring bread and pepperoni into the mines for a simple lunch. The origin of the roll was created by the miners’ wives, who rolled the pepperoni into the bread for their husbands to take to work.
Let’s Cook it
INGREDIENTS:
- DOUGH RECIPE –
- Chicago Style Dough Recipe
- I used milk instead of water, to make the final product a little softer and richer
- FIXINS –
- Pepperoni Sticks or Slices
- Mozzarella cut into 1/2×1/2 sticks (optional)
- MISC –
- Little bit of butter or oil to grease a pan
- 1 Egg for egg wash
- Sesame seeds (optional)
DIRECTIONS:
- Take half of the dough from the recipe above and flatten it out on the counter into a square. It should be pretty thin but not paper thin, maybe like what you expect a thin crust pizza to be.
- Cut the square into 4 equal sections. Place 1-2 pepperoni sticks or an equal portion of slices along with a couple sticks of mozzarella cheese onto the dough spaced equally (not on top of each other). Then roll the dough over the pepperoni and roll that over the cheese, sealing it up and placing it seam side down on a greased baking sheet.
- Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.
- When the oven is preheated, beat the egg with a little water and brush it over the rolls. Follow that up with a light sprinkling of sesame seeds and bake for 20 minutes, or till they are nice and golden brown.
Enjoy this super simple recipe and if you try it let me know, I would love to hear from you.
