I’ve made spinach pasta before, so I figured it couldn’t be that hard to make spinach pizza dough. It’s pretty much the same procedure: I combined about 3 cups of 00 flour (I like King Arthur) with a tablespoon of Kosher salt in my standing mixer.
In a Pyrex measuring cup, I poured in a cup of water and put it in the microwave for 30 seconds to bring the temperature to about 100 degrees. (Over 110 degrees will kill the yeast.) I added a tablespoon of dry active yeast to the water, and then a bit of sugar, mixing it well, and I let it sit for about 10 minutes until it started foaming up.
Meanwhile, I thawed a package of frozen spinach and removed 6 ounces’ worth. I squeezed as much water out of it as I could, reducing the weight to about 4 ounces. I chopped the spinach up well, then mixed it with the flour in the mixing bowl. I added the water with the yeast, adding some of the spinach water if more water was needed.
Once the dough ball pulled from the sides of the mixing bowl, I took it out and continued to knead it by hand until the ball was smooth.
I added a little olive oil to the mixing bowl, and placed the dough ball back in it, covering it with plastic to rise over several hours.
After a few hours, I punched the dough down and let it rise again.
A couple more hours, and I rolled the dough into 2 smalls balls and a small baguette. (Had we planned on making a deep dish pan pizza, I would’ve used the whole dough ball. But we went for thin crust instead.)
I placed my pizza stone in my cold oven, and then preheated my oven to 500 degrees. (I use a cast iron plate, which goes by the brand name Pizzori. It gets really hot and makes the crust nice and crispy.)
Rubbing some corn meal on my pizza peel, I placed the baguette on it and slid it into the oven, baking it for about 20 minutes until it was golden brown.
I let the oven warm up again after removing the baguette, and starting prepping my pizzas.
The first pizza was a white pizza, meaning I made a bechamel sauce for it: a simple combination of 2 tablespoons melted butter in a saucepan with 2 tablespoons of flour, mixing to make a roux. I then added some milk, and a little granulated garlic and oregano. I let it thicken and set it aside.
I stretched the spinach dough out on the pizza peel, and spread the bechamel sauce on it. I followed this with slices of mozzarella, and bits of home-cured guanciale that I had chopped and fried in a pan. In the oven it went, and once it came out, I added shaved Parmigiano Reggiano and some microgreens.
Pizza #2 utilized leftovers from previous dinners. I spread the spinach dough out on the pizza peel, and spread some barbecue sauce on it. I followed this with leftover chili meat I had made for chili dogs a couple of nights before. Then I topped the meat with a combination of mozzarella and cheddar.
I still had some spinach left over. So the next day, I prepared another wonderful recipe. Check in with me next time.
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