This is my standard pizza dough, but we are not making a pizza today.
We are making a spinach and feta pie.
I love a mixture of greens and herbs stuffed into pretty much any dough.
Spanakopita, quiche, burek -- so many cuisines have some version of a spinach pie.
I love them all, but they all require serious work and serious clean up.
None of them can possibly happen in my house on a weekday, so I decided to try my pizza
dough.
I’ve been making and teaching this dough for more than a decade.
I know that on the internet, I am known for my pasta dough, but among my flesh and blood
students that I meet in real classes, it’s the pizza dough that seems to be everyone’s
favorite.
It’s so quick and easy to put together and comes out like the most incredible thin crust
pizza in a normal home oven.
That’s why it’s the most used dough out of all the doughs that I teach.
I can’t believe it took me this long to figure out this dough’s potential for other
dishes, but better late than never.
You need to make the dough a day ahead or up to 4 days ahead, but the whole process
takes 5 minutes.
Set a mixer bowl on a scale.
Add 226 grams of unbleached all-purpose flour (I am using King Arthur brand), 1 tsp of red
label SFA instant yeast, 1 tsp of sugar, and I am using 2 tsp of Diamond Crystal Kosher
Salt, which is equivalent to 1 tsp of table salt.
For all other salt types, use 5.7 grams weighed on a high precision scale or you can use the
nutrition label to figure out the spoon equivalent for your salt.
Mix all the dry together for about 30 seconds with a big spoon.
Add one hundred and fifty eight grams of room temperature water (between 70 and 90F).
Fit the mixer with a paddle attachment and turn it on low speed.
Mix only until there is no more dry flour remaining.
The reason we aren’t kneading this dough is to prevent it from developing much gluten.
This will allow us to stretch it extremely thinly without too much shrinkage.
The fans of Jerry Seinfeld probably know another meaning for the term shrinkage, but this is
a family friendly channel, so I am just talking about the dough, you know, resisting stretching.
This is the point of no dry flour.
Just to be sure, I’ll give it 5 more seconds, and we are done.
This will make 2 pies, so we need to get 2 containers ready.
Each one should be 2 cups in capacity and each one needs 12 grams of olive oil, which
is just short of a tablespoon.
Swirl the containers to get the oil to go up the walls.
Using a large lightly oiled spoon, scrape up the bottom of the bowl and add all those
bits to your shaggy ball of dough.
Cut the dough in half.
You see -- I forgot to oil my spoon and my dough is very sticky, so let me oil it now
and we’ll move each half into its container.
Here is the first half.
And the second half.
I want you to notice that my hands and my counter are still perfectly clean.
There is no mess to clean up besides washing 1 bowl.
Gently flatten out the dough.
Cover the containers immediately and now we need to let the dough rise.
Technically, you can do it at room temperature, but I have 3 pet peeves with that method.
It’s unpredictable.
It can take anywhere from 1 to 3 hours depending on the temperature of your kitchen.
It doesn’t have as much flavor as the dough made a day ahead, and room temperature dough
is harder to work with than the cold.
So, here is how I do the rising.
I give my dough 45 minutes at room temperature and then put it in the fridge to continue
rising overnight.
If you don’t have 45 minutes after you make the dough, no problem.
You can put it in the fridge immediately, but in that case, you’ll need to wait at
least 24 hours to use it.
So if you are making this dough at night for next day’s dinner, that’s fine, but if
you hope to use it sooner, like next day’s lunch, you might want to give it at least
30 minutes before refrigerating.
There are a few things that make this filling particularly tasty.
The first is the onions cooked in butter.
The second is the variety of greens.
I am not just using spinach.
I am using a ton of different herbs, like scallions, dill, parsley, cilantro, and tarragon.
Other good ones are mint and sorrel, but I don’t have those today.
What you use is completely flexible.
Obviously, if you don’t like something, don’t use it.
And of course, you can use other greens like Swiss Chard.
When I use spinach, I don’t bother cooking it because it wilts so quickly, but when I
use chard, I do cook it first.
If you want to see how to do that, you can check out my ravioli video linked below.
Dice 1 yellow onion, melt 2 Tablespoons of butter in a small pot over medium heat.
Add the onions and a generous pinch of salt.
Cook, stirring occasionally until the onions are completely translucent and become golden
brown.
This will take 15 to 20 minutes.
By the end, they should look like this.
While they are cooking, I am usually chopping my greens.
Ok, so to make life easier, buy baby spinach.
This way you don’t have to wash it, dry it, or remove the stems.
In the US, baby spinach is normally sold already washed.
Obviously, if your spinach (either baby or not) is sold sandy, you have to wash it.
But you have to be careful here.
You don’t want to put wet spinach into your dough because of the risk of making the dough
soggy.
This means that if you are washing the spinach yourself, you need to do this a day ahead.
Give it a good wash, a spin in a salad spinner, let it air dry for about 30 minutes, wrap
it in a dry paper towels, put it into a container and then refrigerate.
Overnight, the paper towel will absorb the remaining moisture and you’ll have clean
and dry spinach.
If the stems are this size or bigger, pull them out.
Anything smaller can stay.
Grab the spinach with 2 hands to form a tight bundle and slice.
Then put one hand on top of the knife and chop it some the other way.
For the herbs, I am using dill, parsley, cilantro, and tarragon.
Remove all the tough stems, but don’t worry about little soft ones.
If you aren’t sure whether to remove it or not, stick it in your mouth and try to
chew it.
If it doesn’t bother you, it can stay.
Chop up the herbs just like you did the spinach, but a bit smaller.
Slice a couple of scallions.
Put everything into a big bowl.
Add a little salt.
Don’t get carried away since greens shrink a lot.
I am only using 1/2 tsp of Diamond Crystal Kosher.
For most other salts, you’d need way less.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Helen video without pomegranate molasses, but you can
always replace it with lemon juice.
Dry a chunk of feta and crumble over your spinach.
I really like Valbresso feta, which is a sheep milk feta from France.
It feels fatty and creamy, but of course, you can use any cheese you want.
It doesn’t even need to be feta.
Add the cooked onions and mix everything very thoroughly with your hands.
We are trying to get the wilting process started, so don’t be afraid to be aggressive.
This filling is ready to use immediately, but can be made a day in advance and stored
in the fridge.
Preheat the oven to 500 degrees with one rack on the lowest setting and another rack on
the highest.
It’s important for the oven to be very hot, so give it at least 30 minutes.
If you want to use a pizza stone or steel, preheat them on the bottom rack with the oven.
To heat them through, you might need an even longer preheat -- more like 45 minutes.
But I find that I can get a crust just as crispy if I slide the parchment paper directly
onto the rack, so that’s what I’ll do today.
Since the olive oil tends to solidify in the fridge, you might want to get the dough out
about 10 minutes before shaping.
Let the dough fall out of the container and onto your hand over a piece of parchment paper
and place it oiled side down.
Dear home cooks, please stop torturing yourself with rolls of parchement paper.
It’s unusable.
You can get precut, perfectly flat paper on amazon.
I’ll give you a link below.
Get the rest of the oil out of the container and spread it in a circle 1 inch from your
dough.
You don’t want to oil the periphery of the paper to help the dough stick once it gets
thin.
Oil your hands and gently pat the dough flat.
This is the part of the fingers that does the work -- the soft flat pillow, not the
tip.
The fingertips can rip the dough.
Instead of thinking of this step as stretching, think of it as patting and thinning.
Try to work on all parts of the dough evenly.
If you notice that one part is becoming thinner than the other parts, leave it alone and work
on the thicker parts.
If you get a hole, don’t worry about it.
It will taste just as good with a hole as it will without a hole.
But you can avoid holes, by using flat hands and keeping the dough even.
A common mistake is to stretch from the center which results in the middle being too thin
and the outside too thick.
Try to avoid that and pat the outer parts flat to thin them out.
Avoid getting too close to any edge and keep the dough as centered as possible.
Yes, it’s normal for the dough to shrink a bit when you stop stretching.
Wait for it to stop.
Then evaluate if this is the thickness you want.
If you want it thinner, work on it some more.
When I am working on it, it feels like an 1/8th of an inch or 3 mm, but after I stop,
it jumps to about 4mm.
With a bit of trial and error, you’ll find the thickness that you like.
Ok.
I think this looks good.
Let’s divide the filling between the two doughs.
Spread the filling out to leave a 1 and a half inch border all around.
Then pick up the dough and fold it towards the center, stretching it slightly.
Even though my border is not that big, the dough can reach all the way to the center
because it’s stretchy.
You want to leave a little hole in the center to allow the moisture produced by the greens
to evaporate.
Make sure to wipe all the excess oil around the pie.
You don’t want it to drip in the oven and create smoke.
This is especially important if you are not using a pizza steel or stone.
Slide the parchment paper onto a rimless cookie sheet or a pizza peel and slide directly onto
the bottom rack.
It will slide very easily, so don’t push too hard.
Try to do this quickly so that you don’t lose the oven heat.
Bake for 8 minutes without convection.
Then you have 2 options.
If you have the convection fan you can turn it on and bake for another 2 minutes or until
the top of the dough browns.
If you don’t have the convection fan, you can move the pie to the upper rack for 2 minutes
and that will brown the top just as well.
Here is how to get it out, put the cookie sheet right under the rack, grab the parchment
with tongs and pull.
Make sure to hold the cookie sheet firmly so that when the pie falls on it, you don’t
drop it.
Slide it onto the top rack for 2 minutes.
Here it is -- all golden and beautiful.
Slide it onto a cutting board, and brush all over with butter.
The butter will make the dough slightly softer and I probably don’t need to explain the
other benefits of butter.
If you are not sure how butter makes your life better, you are watching the wrong channel.
Cool your pie for about 7 minutes and slice.
I forgot to do this in the video, but if you want to retain even more crispness, before
sliding the pie onto a cutting board, slide it onto a cooling rack and pull out the parchment.
Let it cool there for 7 minutes and then put it onto a board to serve.
Let me slice it so that you can see the inside.
The top of the dough is bubbly, buttery and tender and the bottom is so thin and crisp.
Yes, this crispness is possible without a pizza steel.
This pie is wonderful as is, or with a garlicky yogurt tip.
Of course, the filling possibilities are endless.
I’ve done it with mashed potatoes from my potato pirozhki video and it was pretty awesome.
This pie even rewarms well.
If you plan to rewarm, I would definitely cool it on a rack.
Then rebake at 500F for 5 minutes on the bottom rack and rebutter it.
Here are more very detailed culinary tutorials for you to check out and if you are ever in
the Boston area, maybe I’ll see you in one of my classes.