Pissaladière

Pissaladière

I am no pizza-maker, but I wanted to try my hand at making this Provencal pizza-like specialty.

After reading a couple websites, I started digging into my cookbooks and magazines and discovered that I had no less than 5 different recipes for it already under my roof, in print.

After reading all the recipes, on-line and off, I noticed some distinct characteristics:

1) There seem to be two types of traditional dough choices: a yeasted pizza-like dough and a flaky, puff-pastry style dough.
2) Most everyone agrees that the traditional toppings are caramelized onions, niciose olives, and anchovies.
3) Some recipes added tomato.
4) Some recipes added a layer of pesto or dijon mustard.
5) Some recipes added the olives and/or the anchovies after cooking instead of before.
6) Only one recipe included ground clove as a seasoning, which, after further research, I've discovered is widely considered to be a traditional pissaladière seasoning.
7) Each recipe had a different technique for onion caramelization.

So, I wound up going with a hybrid recipe approach, taking elements from different recipes and creating my own.

Surprisingly to some, but not to me, I took the dough recipe from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook (an excellent, thorough cookbook, full of great photos and diagrams, well-tested recipes, and a lot of useful information). Her dough is a simple yeasted, bread-flour dough with a little sugar, salt, and olive oil.

I went for a straight topping (onions, olives, anchovy). Here's my approach to the onions:
3 medium onions, thinly sliced
4 tbsp olive oil
2 sprigs of thyme
2 cloves of garlic, whole and unpeeled
1 bay leaf
pinch of ground clove
teaspoon of kosher salt
more salt and pepper to taste

--Add oil, onions, thyme, bay, garlic, and salt to a large saucepan over medium low heat (light sizzle)
--Cover it and stir every 10-12 minutes
--After about 30 minutes I found that it was getting plenty watery so I did the rest uncovered for another 30 minutes
(The onions should start to noticeably change color after about 45 minutes. I took it for another 15-20 minutes after the color started changing--you could easily go another 30 minutes longer than I did for a deep, mahogany carmelization).
--Remove thyme (most of the leaves have probably fallen off into the onion), the bay, and garlic.
--Add the ground clove, a few grinds of pepper, and adjust salt if necessary.
--Chill to let the flavors meld.

After chilling, I had essentially a onion paste with a little structure. I let this come back up to room temperature, stretched out my dough, spread it across the dough, added pitted Niçoise olives, anchovies (oil-packed, but I think salt-packed and rinsed would be better), and baked at 450 for about 15 minutes on parchment paper on a baking sheet.

The result tasted much better than it looked. The crust was crisp and tasty with a nice sheen on the bottom from the oil.



I'll definitely be doing this again, especially for guests. It makes a great starter and it's astoundingly customizable.

Best,
Michael

It may have tasted better than it looks, but I think it looks pretty amazingly delicious -- but then crust with lots of onions and olives appeals to me.

eatchicago wrote:I'll definitely be doing this again, especially for guests. It makes a great starter and it's astoundingly customizable.

Guests? Did someone say guests? My schedule is infinitely flexible!


P.S. Michael: thanks for the post on one of my longstanding favorites. You're right; easy to make, delicious to eat and I enjoyed reading the story as well as the recipe. Leftovers?

made my first one this spring


I think I'll take the onions a bit darker next time

Nice photo, mhill95149. Delicious-looking, in an extra-terrestrial-terrain kinda way.

I plan on taking my onions darker next time too.

Salt-packed or oil-packed anchovy?

Best,
Michael

Reminds me - Marketplace on Oakton sells jars of delicious anchovy-wrapped capers. I wonder how that would work on a pissiladere? Gonna have to try (though this would mean I have to stop snacking on them)

Been meaning to get to this one, thanks for the reminder, Mike!

Thanks, eatchicago, for inspiring me to make a version of this for the LTH 1,000 recipe potluck dinner. I took the advice you and melhill gave, and took the onions to a more mahogany color - a total of 3 hours cooking time. I added some sliced fennel and cooked it right along with the onions - about 2:1 onion to fennel ratio. Instead of Martha's, I used a super buttery puff-pastry dough for the crust, and cut the pastry into small pieces to facilitate serving as finger food. I pricked the center of the pastry with a fork so that it wouldn't rise too much, brushed my sheet pan with pretty good olive oil, and baked for 17 minutes at 425 degrees. I liked the combo of buttery interior and olive-oil flavored, crisped exterior.

The goal was to make something that could be eaten in about 2 bites, so after spreading the onion jam on the dough, I placed 1/2 an anchovy (halved lengthwise) on top, taking up most of the lenth of the pastry, and then 1/2 an olive at each end. That way, each hopefully-balanced bite would contain 1/2 an olive, 1/4 of an anchovy, and half the sweet onion jam. A picture would probably help illustrate this, so hopefully someone who snapped one at the party will post.

Thanks again - I'm sure I'll be making this, with perhaps a few added tweaks, many times more.

Kenny,

That was one of my favorite dishes at the potluck! I believe I got the proper ratio of ingredients in every bite.

picture of my above-described rendition, courtesy of RonnieSuburban's fine photography: