Today I made a 3 cheese spinach pizza. This is constructed just a little bit different from other pizzas. Normally the sauce goes on the crust first. With the spinach, which I have mixed with Ricotta, needs to be spread on the crust before the sauce otherwise it would push the sauce off.
I have taken 1/2 of the dough I made yesterday and removed it from the fridge a couple of hours ago so it can warm up to room temp. About 1/2 hour before I got started on assembly of the pizza, I placed my baking stone on the top rack in the oven and pre heated it to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
The first thing to do is clean the spinach. Take a bunch and dunk it in a plain water bath, keep doing that until no dirt or sand is present. Then dry it as best you can, you don't want a wet spinach for this. A salad spinner works great. Then course chop it. Since I don't want any water, I like to cook it in an open non stick skillet.
Cook it down over medium low heat and then add a quarter cup of Ricotta.
Remove from heat, stir it together and season with some fresh ground black pepper. Set it aside.
Put the dough on a floured board and roll it out to about a 12 inch circle. The dough is a sticky dough so don't be stingy on the flour.
I like to transfer it to the peel on a piece of parchment paper. Check your parchment to make sure it can take the high temp it's going to bake at, not all parchment can. If you don't use parchment then you have to liberally dust the peel with either corn meal or semolina.
Spread the Ricotta Spinach mixture over the crust. Be gentle, you don't want to tear the crust.
Top with sauce and Italian style herbs. Not too much, you don't want the pizza turning into soup.
Top with some mozzarella (I like to use about 4 ounces) and some Parmesan.
Carefully move the pizza on the parchment to the baking stone which has been preheated for at least 30 minutes. After 4 minutes I like to slide the parchment out (the crust will be set up enough at this point to let you do that) and continue baking for about 5 additional minutes.
Use a peel to remove the pizza.
Wait a few minutes and enjoy. It goes nice with a simple salad.
Alright, what if you don't have a baking stone and peel? You can make it in a pan. But, instead of baking at the top rack, you must bake it on the bottom rack, or if you can, on the oven floor. This is the reason why. With a pre heated baking stone the crust is going to bake up nicely no matter where in the oven you place it. But you want the cheese to brown up at the same moment the crust is done. So you bake it on the top rack so the heat that radiates off the oven ceiling will do the job for the cheese. When baking in a pan, you risk an under done crust unless you bake it on the bottom of the oven. The baking time will be a little longer, you will have to judge it.
I hope you enjoyed this blog as much as I enjoyed making the pizza.