Spinach Florentine Foccacia Recipe

Spinach Florentine Foccacia

I had my girlfriends over the other night for dinner and wine. I wanted to make homemade pizzas, a variety, and most importantly, from scratch. Actually these are really foccacia pizzas, since I used my foccacia bread recipe as the crust.

Some usual suspects were made, like a meat-lover “husband” pizza, with Canadian bacon, salami, and sausage, then a veggie pizza with mushrooms, olives, fresh mozzarella slices, and just to change up the usual vegetable pizza toppings, I added chopped asparagus. For the third, I wanted to incorporate some of my favorite foods, spinach and feta, that developed into this Florentine-style pizza.

It was a hit with the girls and husband. I think next time I might add caramelized onions and fresh mozzarella rounds. I think this would also taste out of this world with a mushroom cream sauce, instead of the tomato sauce, making it a white pizza. You can take this recipe anywhere, really. I would go as far as mixing in crushed garlic into the foccacia crust, giving it a garlic toast kind of flavor.

Ingredients

• 2 cups of spinach, steamed
• 1/3 cup yellow onion, minced (I tossed it into the food processor, with a few pulses)
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 cup tomato sauce
• 1 1/2 cups mozzarella, shredded
• 1/2 cup feta, minced
• Salt and pepper to taste

Foccacia pizza dough ingredients

• 2 3/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
• 1 tablespoon cane sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 cup luke warm water

Directions

1. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, salt, sugar, and yeast
2. Pour water and olive oil into your dry flour mixture, mix until combined (don’t over mix, I just use my hands)
3. Once dough has an elastic consistency, place ball of dough into a olive oil greased medium size bowl, and flip dough once so both sides are lightly coated with oil
4. Cover bowl with a clean towel, and let dough rise for 20-25 minutes
5. Once dough has risen,  stretch it out a bit to fit into a greased baking pan, (size of pan is negotiable, the smaller the pan, the thicker the crust, the bigger the pan, the thinner, it is your call, both come out great)
6. Spoon tomato sauce onto dough and evenly spread out
7. Top with mozzarella cheese
8. In a medium skillet over a med-high heat, lightly saute onions and garlic with a drizzle of olive oil
9. Once onions are translucent toss in your spinach (if your spinach is not steamed, you can toss it in fresh at this point, as well)
10. Saute for two minutes, and lightly salt (less than 1/2 teaspoon)
11. Spoon spinach mixture onto pizza, and spread evenly
12. Evenly sprinkle feta cheese over pizza
13. Bake for 20 minutes, or until golden brown

Related: Bread Recipes, European Recipes, Italian Recipes, Vegetarian Recipes