Pissaladière
Onion flatbread from Nice with anchovies and olives. Simmer the onions for two hours, and not a minute less.
- Preparation
- 30 min
- Cook/bake time
- 2 hr 20 min
- Total
- 3 hr 50 min
- Difficulty
- Medium
- Calories
- 384 kcal
- Servings
- 8 pieces
- Prep
- 30 min
- Cooking & baking
- 2 hr 20 min
- Resting
- 1 hr
Only 2 hr 50 min of that is hands-on – the rest takes care of itself.
Onion flatbread from Nice with anchovies and olives. Simmer the onions for two hours, and not a minute less. The pissaladière is not a pizza: there are no tomatoes and no cheese, and the topping consists practically only of onions that have been cooked down into a sweet jam. The name comes from pissalat, an anchovy paste.
Why this works
Two hours of braising time for onions sounds excessive and is the whole point. Onions contain about ninety percent water and also fructans, long-chain sugars that hardly taste sweet themselves. During long, gentle braising, two things happen: the water evaporates, and enzymes and heat break down the fructans into simple sugars. Two kilos of pungent onions thus become barely a pound of sweet, almost jammy mass, without a single gram of sugar being added. If the heat is too high, the onions caramelize on the outside and burn before this breakdown has taken place inside; the result tastes bitter instead of sweet. The anchovies provide the counterpole: their salt and glutamate are exactly what the sweetness needs to avoid seeming one-dimensional.
Step-by-step instructions
- 1
Braise onions for two hours
Sweat the onions with olive oil, thyme and bay leaf covered over the lowest heat and let them braise for two hours, stirring occasionally. They should not turn brown, but collapse and become golden and sweet. Too high heat makes them bitter, not sweet.
- 2
Prepare dough
Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm water and knead it with flour, oil and salt for eight minutes to a smooth dough. Let it rise for an hour until it has doubled. The dough is deliberately simple, it is the base, not the main character.
- 3
Drain onions
Remove the thyme and bay leaf and let the onions boil down uncovered for another ten minutes if they are moist. A moist topping softens the dough, the mass should be thick and jammy, not soupy.
- 4
Top
Stretch the dough thinly on a greased baking sheet and distribute the onion mass evenly over it. Lay the anchovy fillets in a diamond pattern over it and place an olive in each diamond. The pattern is tradition and practical at the same time: this way each piece gets the same amount of salt.
- 5
Bake
Bake the pissaladière at 200 °C for about 25 minutes until the edge is golden brown and crispy. Serve lukewarm, not hot, the sweetness of the onions comes into its own much better at a medium temperature. In Nice, it is eaten as a starter or out of hand.
Our best tips
- Two kilos of onions are correct. They collapse to about a quarter, anyone who halves the amount ends up with a thin layer instead of a topping.
- Lowest heat when braising. Onions that turn brown are caramelized and taste bitter; onions that collapse golden are sweet. The difference lies solely in the temperature.
- Serve lukewarm. Hot covers the sweetness, cold makes the dough tough, about twenty minutes after baking is the right moment.
Tasty variations
Without anchovies
Instead of anchovies, two tablespoons of capers and more olives. Then the salty counterpole is missing, which is why the onion mass should be salted a little more strongly.
On puff pastry
Instead of yeast dough, a roll of puff pastry. Significantly faster and quite common in southern French bakeries, even if not classic.
Nutrition facts
| Calories | 384 kcal |
|---|---|
| Protein | 10 g |
| Carbohydrates | 51 g |
| – of which sugar | 13 g |
| Fat | 14 g |
| Fiber | 7 g |
Where the 384 kcal come from
per serving
Calculated from the ingredients – how we do it
We add up reference values for every ingredient and divide by the number of servings. These assumptions are baked in:
- Reference values per 100 g – for the raw ingredient, exactly as listed.
- Tinned goods count at drained weight, bone-in meat at purchase weight: you eat about 70 per cent of a chicken thigh and leave the rest.
- Water evaporates as you cook. The energy stays in the pot, the weight does not – so the figure is per serving, not per 100 g of finished dish.
- Anything listed without a quantity – “salt and pepper” – is not counted.
A guide value, not a lab measurement: no two onions weigh the same, and fat content varies from pack to pack.
Frequently asked questions
Is pissaladière a pizza?
No. There are neither tomatoes nor cheese, and the topping consists almost exclusively of long-braised onions. The only thing they have in common is the yeast dough as a base.
How many calories does a piece have?
Around 385 kcal per piece for eight pieces. The majority comes from dough and olive oil, the onions themselves contribute only about 70 kcal per piece despite their quantity.
Why do my onions taste bitter?
The heat was too high. If the heat is too high, the onions caramelize on the outside and burn before their fructans inside are broken down into simple sugars. Lowest heat and two hours of patience are the whole trick.
Where does the name come from?
From 'pissalat', a paste made from fermented sardines and anchovies that was originally spread on the flatbread. Today, whole anchovy fillets are mostly placed on top.
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