Feta Spinach Pizza WITH HONEY!

The joke here at SteffesWood Apiary is that if you stand still long enough, someone will drizzle honey on you.  We put honey on everything!  While honey and pizza may not seem like a likely combination, just a little bit of honey on this kind of Greek-y (and geeky) white pizza  marries well with the salty feta cheese.  The inspiration for this pizza came from a flatbread recipe on Epicurious that uses artichokes and prosciutto. I didn't have any of that, so I sauteed garlic, some sweet red pepper, spinach and black olives.  If I had had kalamata olives, I would have used them instead. On the spur of the moment, I invited a friend over to share it with me and she pronounced it "good."  After a few glasses of wine, we each had another slice and I think it was even better at room temperature (though the wine may have had something to do with that)!

Feta Spinach Pizza with Honey
3 cloves garlic, chopped
an ungodly amount of olive oil (say about 1/4 cup)
1/4 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes
1/2 sweet red pepper, sliced thin
2 cups fresh spinach (chopped a bit if not baby spinach)
1/4 cup black olives, sliced 
4 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
1 tablespoon honey
frozen pizza dough, thawed (Need a pizza dough recipe?  Try Mark Bittman's, which I featured in a recipe for dessert calzones a few years ago.)

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. (Home pizza enthusiasts suggest heating the oven for at least 30 minutes if not an hour.)  If you have a pizza stone or steel, put it in the oven to heat up.  If not, bake the pizza on a cookie sheet (won't be as crispy, but it'll still be good).

Place the garlic in a large saute pan, pour the olive oil over it and saute on medium high until the garlic just begins to sizzle.  Sprinkle the red pepper flakes and add the sweet red pepper.  Saute for a few minutes more, turning down the heat if necessary so that the garlic doesn't burn.  Add the fresh spinach, cover the pan, and remove from the heat.  When the spinach is fully wilted, toss in the olives.  You might want to add a little bit of salt and black pepper, too--but remember that the feta adds a lot of saltiness if you do.

Roll out the pizza dough.  If you're using a pizza stone or steel, place the dough on parchment paper on top of a cookie sheet without sides.  If you like, turn up the edges to keep the toppings from spilling over. Prick the dough in several places with a fork.  Slide the dough with the parchment paper (but without toppings!) into the hot oven and bake for 3 minutes.  Remove the dough from the oven and set the parchment paper aside.  The dough may puff up a bit. If so, just tamp it down with a fork. Spread the spinach/pepper/olive/garlic topping all over the partially baked dough.  Crumble the feta cheese on top.  With a tablespoon held high, drizzle the honey all over.  Return the pizza with the toppings back to the hot oven and bake for 5 to 10 minutes more, until the underside of the crust is well-browned and the feta has melted a bit.  If you don't have a pizza stone, then you can place the pizza on a cookie sheet.  You might still want to bake the dough for 3 minutes before putting on the toppings.  

This made one medium pizza, plenty for two people.