Pissaladiere

Serves: 12
Difficulty: Medium

Julia Sedefdjian became the youngest chef in France to be awarded a Michelin star at the tender age of 21. A native of Provence, she helms Baieta in Paris’s 5^th arrondissement, where her culinary creativity knows no bounds. Here she shares with us her recipe for pissaladière, a bread-based savoury not a million miles away from a pizza, which originates from her home town of Nice

Ingredients

• 2kg yellow onions, thinly sliced
• 100g olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 bouquet garni
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 50g olives (from Nice)
• 50g salt-cured anchovy fillets
• 1 bunch of round radish chips sliced on a mandolin
• 40g dried olive stones

For the bread dough
Sourdough starter

• 125g flour 35g baker’s yeast
• 200g water
• 625g flour
• 150g water
• 50g olive oil
• 30g salt

Directions

For the onion confit

1Cook the sliced onions with the olive oil, garlic cloves and bouquet garni until softened.

2Season with salt and pepper, then cover and cook over low heat for 45 minutes. Remove garlic at the end of cooking. Cool and set aside.

For the bread dough

1Make the sourdough starter: mix 125g of flour with the yeast dissolved in a little lukewarm water and let stand covered with a cloth. After 30 minutes, the dough must double in size.

2Arrange the remaining flour (625g) in a circle. In the middle add the water, the olive oil and the salt. Knead the dough by adding water until smooth then stirring in the sourdough and kneading everything together.

Process

1Spread the bread dough ½ cm thick and put it on a pie plate or an oiled sheet pan. Spread the onion confit over the dough and let it rise a second time at room temperature to obtain a soft dough with the cooking juices from the onions.

Baking

1Cook the pissaladière in an oven at 180C for 18 minutes. Season with pepper after removing from the oven.

Finish and presentation

1Slice the pissaladière into 4 cm squares.

2On a plate, arrange 3 staggered squares of pissaladière, top with the olives, rolled anchovies and radish slices (salt these). Sprinkle with dried (whole) olive stones.