August 22, 2025
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About this recipe
Pissaladière is probably the dish I grew up eating most outside of the home. In Nice it’s everywhere. Bakeries, markets, street stalls at the Cours Saleya. You buy a square of it warm, wrapped in paper, and eat it standing up. It’s a specialty that’s so embedded in daily life in Nice that you stop noticing it until you’re somewhere else and suddenly miss it enormously. That’s pissaladière for me.
People call it an onion pizza, and I understand why, it’s a yeasted dough with toppings baked in the oven. But it’s actually really its own thing. Because there’s no tomato, no cheese, and the onions are not a topping so much as basically the major flavour. You need about a kilo and a half of them, cooked down over very low heat for at least an hour and a half until they collapse into something sweet, golden, and almost jammy. The anchovies and olives season it and give it that unmistakable savouriness, and it wouldn’t taste the same without them. But the onions are the soul of the dish.
Where Pissaladière comes from
The name comes from “pissalat,” and pissalat comes from the Niçard dialect words “peis salat,” which just means salted fish. It was an ancient Niçois condiment made from small sardines and anchovies that were fermented and seasoned with aromatics like thyme, bay leaf, and cloves, then spread onto a bread base before the onions went on. So in the original version, there were no anchovy fillets at all. Just this savoury paste, and onions.
The first written recipe for pissaladière was found in a document from the year 879 in Provence, which tells you how old this really is. The dish is thought to have Genoese roots too, which makes sense given how close Nice is to the Italian border. It’s connected to the piscialandrea, a Genoese flatbread named after the admiral Andrea Doria, which was the dish that eventually became what we now call pissaladière as it crossed the border into Nice and adapted to local ingredients. The main difference is that the piscialandrea uses tomato but the pissaladière never does.
As Mediterranean culinary borders shifted over the centuries, pissaladière soaked up influences from Liguria and became one of the true icons of Nice, sitting alongside salade Niçoise, fougasse, and pan bagnat as the dishes that define the city’s table.
What happened to the Pissalat?
If you go looking for pissalat today you’ll struggle to find it. The fishing of poutine, the tiny anchovies and sardine fry needed to make authentic pissalat, is now extremely regulated or outright banned in most of France to protect the marine ecosystems. Only a handful of coastal communes around Nice, Antibes, Menton, and Cros-de-Cagnes still have a special dispensation to fish for it, so pissalat has become an ultra-speciality by legal obligation rather than by choice.
The Cuisine Nissarde committee, which awards the label protecting authentic Niçois cooking, now officially recognises that pissaladière can be made without pissalat while still being considered authentic, as long as good quality anchovies are used instead of the pissalat. So this version is both traditional and fully approved.
The anchovy
Pick good anchovies to spread on your Nice pizza! Make sure to find the good stuff. If you’re in France, I would get “Anchois de Collioure” who have a long artisanal salting tradition and feature on lists of Europe’s best preserved anchovies.
If you’re not in France, I recommend the Spanish Cantabria anchovies which are the ones from the Bay of Biscay where the fish are large, fatty, and hand-processed with great care. There are two brands who stand out in this region, Mr. Moris has excellent anchovies matured in salt for at least 8–12 months. And Ortiz have meaty, silky, beautifully cured anchovies. You can’t go wrong with either of them.
A note on the neighbours
Head east along the coast towards the Italian border and you’ll find the pichade in Menton, a tomato-topped cousin that shows just how close the culinary crossover between Nice and Liguria really is. Further along still and you’re essentially in Italy. The tarte de Menton is a similar thing but without the anchovy, for those who want the dough and the onions without the fish. Worth knowing about. Worth trying if you’re ever in the area.
How to bake Pissaladière
The onions need time and a low flame. You need to keep the heat gentle, stir occasionally, and let them do their thing for a full hour and a half. Rush them and you end up with something pale and sharp rather than sweet and golden. They should be soft enough to almost mash with a fork before they go on the dough.
For the bake you want a good heavy baking tray that conducts heat evenly and gives you a properly crisp base. Pair it with a perforated baking mat, and I guarantee you will have the nicest and most perfectly baked base instead of a soggy or uncooked one. The baking tray and baking mat combination is something I swear by when baking any dough.
How to eat Pissaladière
Pissaladière pizza is at its best warm from the oven or at room temperature, which makes it a very good make-ahead option for summer gatherings, picnics, or anything where you don’t want to be cooking to order. Slice it into squares or strips. Put it on the table with a bottle of Provence rosé. That’s the full brief.
It keeps well and is arguably even better the next day once the flavours have settled into each other properly. Cold pissaladière with a glass of something pink and a view of the sea is not a bad way to spend an afternoon. A view of the garden will do just fine too!
Prep Time 20 minutes 
Cook Time 1 hour 50 minutes 
Total Time 2 hours 10 minutes 
Servings 6Description
Ingredients
For the dough
- 250 gr plain flour
- 6 gr baker's yeast
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp salt
- 150 ml water lukewarm
For the topping
- 1,5 kg onion white or yellow
- 2 cloves garlic
- 14 anchovy fillets salted in oil
- 25 black olives
- 1/2 tsp Herbes de Provence
- 1 bay leaf
- 4 sprigs thyme
- black pepper freshly ground
Equipment
Instructions
1. Prepare the dough
- Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water and let it rest for 5-10 minutes until it becomes bubbly and foamy. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour and salt, then add the activated yeast mixture and olive oil. Mix with your hands or a wooden spoon until a shaggy dough forms, then knead on a lightly floured surface for about 10 minutes until the dough is silky and elastic. Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover it, and leave it to prove in a warm spot for about 1 hour or until it has doubled in size. This slow rise will develop a soft, pliant dough that springs back when poked, providing the perfect base for your pissaladière.
2. Caramelise the onions
- While the dough rises, heat the olive oil over low heat in a large frying pan. Add your sliced onions, whole garlic cloves, thyme sprigs, bay leaf, and Herbes de Provence. Season with pepper but go easy on the salt as the anchovies will bring plenty later. Cook very gently for at least 1 hour 30 minutes, stirring now and then. The onions should collapse into a soft, golden tangle, rich and creamy with just a hint of bite left. If in doubt, lower the heat and let the aromatics do their slow magic. Remove the garlic, thyme and bay when done.
3. Shape and prove the dough
- Once the dough has risen, knock it back and roll it into a rectangle about 30x40cm. Lay on a greased baking tray or parchment. Leave it to rest, covered with a damp tea towel, for 20 minutes while you get your toppings ready. This extra pause gives your crust that lovely, slightly pillowy feel.
4. Assemble
- Spread the caramelised onions evenly over the dough right up to the edges. Lay the anchovy fillets in a traditional lattice or diamond pattern over the onions, and set an olive in each diamond shape of anchovy. If you’re feeling whimsical, go as artistic as you like, but tradition is simple and geometric.The anchovies’ salty tang plays perfectly off the sweet onions.
5. Bake
- Bake in a preheated oven at 210°C (fan 190°C) for about 20 minutes, until the edges of the tart are golden and crisp. If you can, let it cool to just above room temperature before slicing. It’s a tart made for sharing, ideally with friends, sunshine, and a carafe of something pink and cold.
Notes
- If you find anchovy fillets too intense, you can rinse and dry them, or use fewer. Some locals swear by a dot of anchovy paste spread thinly over the dough before the onions go on, for deeper umami. Pissaladière keeps well, and is delicious at room temperature, an excellent make-ahead for picnics or parties.
- Pissaladière keeps beautifully, and is often eaten cold, a blessing if you’re prepping ahead for a summer gathering or a lazy British bank holiday.
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