Pissaladière

A thick proved bread base under onions cooked down for an hour and cooled, with the anchovies laid on at the end.

Fish. Not vegetarian — contains fish.

Ingredients

For the base

• 350 g strong white flour
• 200 ml warm water
• 5 g fast-action yeast
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons olive oil

For the topping

• 1.5 kg onions, sliced thin
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, sliced
• 2 bay leaves
• a few thyme sprigs
• 16 anchovy fillets
• 100 g small black olives
• black pepper

Method

1. THE DOUGH IS PROVED AND THICK, AND THE ONIONS GO ON COLD. A proper bread base, risen twice and a good centimetre deep, because it has a kilo and a half of onions to carry and it is meant to be soft and bready underneath rather than crisp. And the onions must be cold when they go on: hot onions laid on a proved base kill the yeast at the surface and the dough bakes dense and flat where they touch.
2. WHICH IS THE OPPOSITE OF THE TARTE FLAMBEE HERE, rolled to two millimetres with no yeast at all and baked in eight minutes. These two look alike in a photograph and are built on contrary decisions.
3. THE ONIONS GO FOR A FULL HOUR AND MUST NOT BROWN. Soft, sweet, collapsed and still pale gold. Caught and browned, they turn bitter, and bitterness against salted anchovy has nothing to balance it.
4. THE ANCHOVIES ARE LAID ON FOR THE LAST TEN MINUTES, not at the start. Twenty minutes in a hot oven and they dissolve to nothing and leave only salt; ten and they stay whole and soft.
5. AND NO SALT GOES IN THE TOPPING AT ALL. The anchovies and olives are doing it, and a kilo and a half of onion reduces their salt into a small space.
6. Flour, yeast, salt and the warm water mixed with 2 tablespoons of the oil and kneaded 8 minutes to a smooth elastic dough.
7. Risen covered 1 hour until doubled.
8. Meanwhile: the 4 tablespoons of oil in a wide pan, onions in with the garlic, bay and thyme, covered 15 minutes.
9. Lid off and cooked over a low heat 45 MINUTES more, stirred occasionally, until collapsed, sweet and still pale. Bay and thyme out. NO SALT.
10. Spread on a plate and COOLED COMPLETELY.
11. The dough knocked back and pressed into an oiled tray about 30 by 24 cm, pushed into the corners, and left to prove a second time 30 minutes.
12. Dimpled all over with the fingertips, and the remaining tablespoon of oil brushed over.
13. The cold onions spread across to the edges.
14. Baked at 200C for 20 minutes, then the anchovies laid in a lattice and the olives dotted between, and a further 10 minutes. Pepper over, and eaten warm rather than hot.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under France · All recipes