yield: Makes one 10- to 12-inch pizza
This pizza is one of my most popular dishes, a kind of warm spinach salad on a crust. I've been serving it since the earliest days at Sullivan Street (its origins—how I came to make it—are now lost in the mists of memory). But, even today, to the best of my knowledge, I'm the only one who offers it. Try it at home, and right after that first bite, you'll see why it's one of the most popular pies I've ever devised. When I make the Popeye in my home kitchen, I deviate from the usual system in this book and bake it (as called for here) rather than placing it under the broiler. The image of that mound of spinach directly under flame just seems wrong—I'm not even sure what would happen, but it wouldn't be good.
1 Place the pizza stone in a gas oven on the middle rack. Preheat the oven on bake at 500°F for 30 minutes. Switch to broil for 10 minutes and then back to bake at 500°F. (For an electric variation, see Cooks' Note.)
2 With the dough on the peel, sprinkle the surface evenly with the garlic. Distribute the pecorino, Gruyère, and mozzarella evenly over the dough. Sprinkle evenly with pepper.
3 With quick, jerking motions, slide the pie onto the stone. Bake for 2 minutes.
4 Pull the rack partially out of the oven. Quickly add the spinach in what will look like a big mound (the spinach will reduce, the mound flattening, as spinach always does when it cooks). Sprinkle evenly with salt. Return the pie to the oven for 3 1/2 to 4 minutes in a gas oven (somewhat longer with an electric oven; see Cooks' Note), until the crust is charred in spots, but not as deeply as with the other pizzas in this book.
5 Using the peel, transfer the pizza to a tray or serving platter. Drizzle evenly with oil. Slice and serve immediately.
Cooks' Note: Electric Variation
Many of you will be working with an electric oven, a slightly different experience from gas. The elements of the electric ones are generally designed to turn off when the oven reaches 500°F or 550°F and the door is closed—even if it's the broiler doing the heating and not the baking element. When you completely understand how I use my gas broiler continuously to force the stone hotter on the surface and also to cook the pizza (door closed) so the crust chars properly and the toppings cook quickly, the electric's shutdown feature may strike you as a potential problem. It's easily solved. Thanks mostly to the tireless efforts of Amanda, our recipe tester (who also, while cooking every pizza in the book, devised some of the serving strategies that follow), we figured out how to overcome this bump in the road. It's a relatively simple matter that requires some adjustments in the timing and procedure.
With electric ovens that turn off at 500°F or so, place the stone on a rack about 4 inches from the top heating element (not the 8 inches called for with gas) and preheat, on bake, at 500°F for the usual 30 minutes. Then, to boost the heat of the stone without the oven's elements shutting down, open the oven door a few inches and leave it ajar for about 30 seconds. Some of the ambient heat will escape, but the stone will stay just as hot. Now close the oven door and switch to broil for 10 minutes to heat the surface to the maximum. Open the door and slide the pizza in to broil. Because the stone is so close to the element, you may need to pull the rack out a few inches to get the pie centered on the stone; do it quickly and don't worry about losing too much heat. With the door closed, broil for roughly 2 minutes longer than specified for gas—until the crust is adequately charred but not burnt and the toppings are bubbling. Remember, it's the visual cues that count most. Check a couple of times; the pizza will cook quickly. The broiler, in our testing, did in fact remain on for the entire cooking period using this method, and the pies turned out perfectly.
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