Pissaladière is an open tart from the south of France whose key flavour elements are heavily, long caramelised onions and anchovy fillets. Olives round off this exceptional flavour experience.
Its name comes from ‘Pissalat’, a paste made from anchovies or sardines, salt and aromatic herbs. Various bread doughs and pizza doughs are widely used for the base. Depending on taste, the dough and topping can be a little thicker or thinner, but we prefer a thinner and above all crispy result.
Our own pizza dough, the quick version described at the end of this recipe, is perfect for this.
So we can focus on the topping here. It doesn’t take much work, but it does take time.
Plenty of onions are peeled, halved and then cut into fine strips of about 2 mm along the fibres.
They are sautéed in a dutch oven or braising pan in some olive oil on an initially higher heat (for us: 7 out of 10) for 10 minutes, stirring regularly so that the onions release liquid evenly. Then they are seasoned generously with salt, pepper, thyme and bay leaf.
Now a lid is placed on top and they are cooked for a further 30 minutes over a low heat (4 out of 10 for us). During this time, you only need to stir once every 10 minutes or so. If brown spots form on the bottom, you can briefly remove the pan from the heat and stir again, the liquid from the onions will then simply dissolve them. That’s all flavour.
After this time, the onions will have browned considerably and finely chopped anchovy fillets from the jar and garlic are added and stirred in.
With the lid still on, caramelise the onions for a further hour at an even lower heat (3 out of 10 for us). Stir every 15 – 20 minutes or so. The onions will then be well browned, soft as butter and very sweet. Remove the bay leaves and any thyme stalks and season the mixture with salt and pepper to taste. It cools more quickly when spread out on a baking tray than in the hot pan.
The time needed for the topping is completely sufficient for preparing and letting rise the dough. Knead it once more gently on a work surface dusted with a little flour and then roll it out so that it covers a baking tray coated with olive oil. We do not create a higher edge here.
Now preheat the oven to maximum heat with convection. Higher heat naturally reduces the baking time considerably, but in this case always leads to a better result.
Then spread the dough with the caramelised onions. In our recipe, 800 g of onions (raw) are used per baking tray for around 400 g of dough, which is the perfect ratio for us. You may cover the entire dough, but we leave a small edge free because we enjoy the pissaladière cut into small pieces with our hands.
Anchovy fillets are placed in a criss-cross pattern over the onions and the spaces in between are filled with one black olive each. These are good proportions and it also looks great.
Bake the Pissaladière in the middle of the oven for between 5 and 10 minutes, depending on the heat. When the dough browns around the edges, it is done.
Enjoy.
And may the taste be with you.
Ingredients (for two oven trays or 4 – 6 people):
For the dough:
400 g Tipo 00 flour
100 g wheat semolina
325 ml water
2 g honey (or brown sugar)
2 g dry yeast
15 g sea salt
Some very good olive oil
For the topping:
1.6 kg yellow onions
A little olive oil
4 cloves of garlic
Salt and black pepper
10 sprigs of thyme
4 bay leaves
8 anchovy fillets from the jar, finely chopped
To finish:
A little Parmigiano Reggiano (optional)
Approx. 50 g anchovy fillets from the jar
Black preserved olives
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