Greek Pizza
The possibilities for homemade pizzas are endless…that’s one of the reasons I love to make them. In this recipe video, I make a Greek inspired pizza. What makes this pizza Greek Inspired? Well I’m taking some of the ingredients in a Greek salad, like red onion, feta, and spinach, and using them as my toppings. The contrasts in flavor between the sweet onion, and the salted feta cheese are awesome, and the spinach while delicious, also make me feel like I’m eating more vegetables – always a good thing. Let me show you how I make it
Recipe Overview and Keys to Success
In addition to the key steps I take while cooking any pizza, here are a couple “must dos”:
- I highly recommend using a pizza stone – and always pre-heating it. The stone, will give you the best/crispiest crust…but, I know not everyone has them. If you don’t, use the heaviest/thickest cooking sheet you have.
- Cook your Greek pizza at the highest temperature your oven will go…I generally set my around, 500 or so degrees.
- Use dry polenta/grits to help slide the pizza from my cutting board onto the pizza stone. The grits act like little ball bearings and help the raw dough slide more easily – otherwise the transfer from cutting board to pizza stone can be a real pain
- Go easy on the Feta cheese. You’re going to use mozzarella as you normally would, the feta is just topping. Because it’s so powerful tasting a little goes a long way.
Ingredients for Greek Pizza (for two)
- Homemade pizza sauce – two thirds cup
- Pizza Dough - Don't make it; buy it from your local pizza shop - they've already sized it for small, med, large
- Mozzarella - a cup+ depending on how much cheese you'd like
- One medium red onion
- ¼ cup of Feta cheese
- ~10 – 15 baby spinach leaves
- Dry polenta (or grits) to help slide the pizza
- Flour to dust your hands & cutting board
Making the Greek Pizza
- Turn your oven all the way up, and pre-heat your pizza stone or baking sheet for at least 20 minutes, while you roll out your dough.
- The only topping you need to cook are the red onions. I like to slice them thin, and the sauté them in olive oil until they are just tender, but not yet brown. You can do this hours ahead of time if you’d like.
- You can watch me roll out pizza dough here. I like to get it as thin as possible, but you can go thicker if you’d like. Generally about an 1/8 of inch thick works well for me, as it gets the crust crispy and is manageable to roll out.
- Lay down some of the dry polenta on your cutting board, before laying down the dough and adding the toppings. Those polenta grains, are like ball bearings and will make it much easier to slide the pizza into the oven.
- Spread the pizza sauce evenly over the dough…I put just a thin layer on, and it doesn’t have to be perfectly distributed, just fairly even.
- Spread the sauteed red onion around the pizza, and top with shredded mozzarella cheese
- Dot teaspoons of feta cheese around the pizza every 3 – 4 inches apart
- Slide the pie into the oven
Getting the Pizza in the Oven
- Getting the pizza into the oven can be the most difficult part. You obviously can’t pick it up, you need to slide it off.
- The polenta you put down on the board, makes that slide possible
- Once you’re ready to load in the pizza, open up your oven and pull out the grate so the pizza stone is accessible. With your pizza on the cutting board, tilt and shake so the pizza starts to slide down toward the pizza stone. You want the far side of the pizza to slide off onto the far side of the stone. Once it hits the dough will “grab” the stone a bit, and keeping the board titled, you should be able to pull away with little shakes leaving the pizza on the stone
- I generally cook my Greek pizza for 10 – 12 minutes; but at least until the top is slightly browned.
- Remove the whole pizza stone from the over and place it on your cook top
- Let the pizza rest on the stone for 10 minutes or so to let the topping settle a bit. The extra time on the stove will make the crust really crispy.
- Top the pizza with the raw baby spinach, & and maybe a few drizzles of good olive oil; slice it up and serve
Hope you have fun making your Greek pizza. Go ahead and leave me a comment and let me know how it goes.
Enjoy!!
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