Pissaladière from Crib Note Recipes

Allez cuisine! One more reason for you to master flat breads that you can top or fill with really swell stuff.

You will need 1 ½ lb pre-made dough, such as pizza dough. This dough freezes well and is handy to keeper in the freezer, tightly wrapped in plastic. Sweet onions, thinly sliced. Two or more peeled cloves of garlic. Eight to twelve good quality anchovies such as boquerones or alici. Black olives (pitted or not) such as niçoise . “Fruity” extra virgin olive oil. A sprig of fresh thyme, and a bay leaf. Bench flour. Sea salt and pepper.

If using a frozen dough allow it to come back to room temperature while still in its cling wrap.

Heat some olive oil in a pan large enough to contain the onions and slowly carmelize them, stirring frequently. This will take about 40 minutes over a low flame. You would use this technique when making onion soup.

Prepare a hot oven, 450º to 475º. No two ovens are calibrated exactly the same, so you have to know you own well.

Unwrap the dough and roll it out onto a floured board. Transfer the dough to a sheet pan you’ve rubbed with olive oil. Crimp the dough against the edges of the pan so that it will hold the filling. You would like the interior to be about 1/8” thick.

Cover the rolled out crust in the pan with a towel and allow it to rest for about fifteen minutes.

Fill the crust with a lavish amount of onions and the garlic cloves. Tuck in the bay leaf. Arrange the anchovies in a cris cross pattern. Scatter the olives across the top. Strip off the leaves from the thyme and sprinkle those around. Season with sea salt and pepper.

Brush the outside crust lightly with a little olive oil and bake in the oven for about 20 minutes or until the outside crust becomes nice and golden brown. Serve sliced.