Pissaladière

Rounding out the recipes for may is a pissaladieère, a French pizza. This is something I made before and am quite fond of. The crust is quite thin, so it has both an initial crispiness, but is also chewy around the edges or cornicione.

Hamelman's recipe works quite well. He doesn't give cooking times, perhaps because he recommends setting ovens as high as they will go and that introduces too much variability. I cooked mine at 550 degrees for about 8 minutes. But I didn't stretch my dough out as much as he recommended. Rather than 12 x 16 my pies were closer to 10 x 15.

Anchovies I can take or leave, but I generally prefer to leave them.
So for this recipe, I diced my anchovies rather than leaving them whole (and left them off part of the pie altogether). Dicing is in the spirit of things but keeps you from getting too much of an anchovy at once.

Finally, I found that the recipe really only made enough caramelized onions for one pie, not two. I would definitely make more next time.

Traditionally, this is made with caramelized onions, olives, and anchovies, just as Hamelman's recipe calls for. However, like pizza, it can be made with other toppings. For my second pie, I used a recipe for a tomato topping from Anissa Helou's Savory Baking from the Mediterranean. Another good choice would be caramelized onions, blue cheese and walnuts.

Bottom line, this is a great crust recipe and well worth going back to.