Spinach, Roma and Ricotta Pizza

This is a rewrite. An hour ago, I had a three-paragraph spiel to go with this recipe. I went on and on about how much I love pizzas, how much I spend on pizzas, how much I’d love to learn how to make pizzas, how much easier my life is with pizzas. I was actually feeling happy talking about pizzas. Then, I accidentally clicked on “delete”. Pffftt! There it went! So, here Iam, trying to reconstruct the previous contents. The only struggle is, the day I hit the 30+ mark, not only did things start to hang, things started to get forgotten as well . For the life of me and my blog, I can’t recall a word from that deleted entry!

Oh well! I’ll just walk straight to the tomatoes and go ahead with my entry to the Hay Hay Donna Day Pizza event at 80 Breakfasts. I hope Joey, the event host, won’t mind that I diverted from Donna’s pizza dough recipe and opted for Jay’s Signature Pizza Crust recipe instead. No disrespect for Ms. Hay, but I have been successful with Jay’s recipe before and if it ain’t broke, why fix it? For the toppings, I took inspiration from Dagwood’s, the pizzeria where we lean towards for pizza fare at work.

Toppings

1 cup ricotta
1 cup chopped spinach, thawed
3 roma tomatoes, sliced to rounds
1 cup mozarella cheese, shredded
1/4 cup olive oil

Pizza Crust

2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon brown sugar
1 1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

Dissolve the yeast and brown sugar in the water in a large bowl. Allow to sit for 10 minutes.
Stir the salt and oil into the yeast solution. Mix in 2 1/2 cups of the flour.

Onto a clean, well floured surface, turn out dough and knead in more flour until the dough is no longer sticky. Place the dough into a well oiled bowl, and cover with a cloth.

Let the dough rise until double; around 1 hour. Punch down the dough, and form a tight ball.
Let the dough to relax for a minute before rolling out. Roll with a rolling pin or knead with hands into a flattened disk.

Carefully lift and arrange to cover an olive-oil greased pizza pan. Trim excess dough at sides of pan. Brush dough surface with olive oil. Top with toppings, spooning ingredients on surface, ending with mozzarella cheese. Drizzle with additional olive oil.

Bake at a 450 F preheated oven for around 10 to 12 minutes, or until cheese and crust are golden brown.

TIPS:
1) Although I only used a regular pizza pan, I did not pre-bake the dough. I just rolled it thin in the middle and I allowed the dough to rise for an additional 10 to 15 minutes on the oiled pan, before I topped and baked the pizza, as suggested by original recipe.

 

Recipes from the Oven in the Archive:

Chocolate Nut Bread

 

Coconut Macaroon