A thick bread dough spread with onions cooked slowly to a sweet mass, criss-crossed with anchovies and dotted with black olives.
What makes it pissaladière
Onions cooked very slowly in olive oil until soft and sweet, never browned.
Anchovies and small black olives on top.
A bread-dough base, not pastry — and no tomato or cheese.
Where it comes from
The name comes from pissalat, a salted paste of tiny fish that was once spread over it — anchovy fillets usually do the job now. It has a close cousin across the border on the Ligurian coast, from the centuries when Nice looked to Genoa.
It's sold by the slice in the bakeries and markets of Nice, and eaten warm or at room temperature, never hot from the oven.
How it varies
With pissalat
The older way, with the fermented fish paste spread under the onions.