Hamelman's Pissaladière Page 275

I was actually quite skeptical about this one. First I have never had pizza without sauce on it, and second putting fish on my favorite food, well it just sounded rather bad. I decided though that I would give it a try, and I am actually rather surprised that I thought it was pretty good. Anchovies are not my favorite topping, and I will not be in a rush to put this on any of my regular pizza's, but I would definitely eat a pizza that already had them on it.

Here I sliced my onions, soaked my thyme in extra virgin olive oil, and have my can of anchovies ready to slice into thin pieces.

I adapted this recipe to use 100% whole wheat white flour, which means the dough will have lots of flavor and probably won't rise very high.  I prefer the White Winter Wheat berries for this type of recipe, so that it gives me flavor but  doesn't overwhelm the other flavors of topping etc.

I saved half the dough for hamburger buns, and used a 1 lb chunk for this recipe.  While the dough was doing it's 2 hour first rise, I sauteed the onions and sliced the anchovies.  Sauteed onions are one of my favorite foods, although normally I just chop some sweet onions and put them on top of my pizza to bake while it bakes.  I chose not to use garlic in this recipe, although I do love fresh garlic most of the time.

I stretched the dough out to approximately 12" x 6" rectangle, since I think it helps the dough's crumb to not use a rolling pin.  I actually didn't have to flour the surface of this wonderful cooking mat, and didn't use any oil on it either. 

Next I moved the dough onto a sheet of parchment paper, which I believe is one of the most awesome inventions of all time. I then placed the onions on the dough, you can see the olive oil and thyme coated the top.  I then chose to put both black olives and green olives onto the top. Just so you know, green olives are really good on pizza.  I have never thought of trying this, until I was reading how Lutz on Mellow baker's did hers. 

This is the dough after it has done it's last proof, which I actually chose to do a full hour rather than the 20 minutes that was suggested in the book.  I actually needed to give my baking stone a chance to heat for 45 minutes, or it wouldn't have worked well for that initial rise and crisp crust.

I love how thick and poofy the dough looks here, and this is where I figured out that this not only doesn't have sauce, but it doesn't have cheese on it either!  This is also the point I almost stopped, disregarded all instructions and put the cheese on.  I had a mental debate, inside my head, something like this:  Pizza has cheese. You should be willing to try new things. But pizza has cheese, and sauce. You can't decide you don't like something without trying it.  Bbbbbbbbut... !!!!!!

From HamelmansPissaladiere

If you look at the picture you will notice, it does NOT have cheese.  My DH and I each had two small pieces, and actually enjoyed them!!!  I then however, could not stop myself and put a mix of parmesan, mozzarella, monterey jack, and cheddar on the top and guess what!  We actually enjoyed our pizza.  I will say it is not our favorite, and we would both choose pepperoni over anchovies, but it was actually ok.

I am working with a group of baker's which call themselves Mellow Baker's and we are baking from a book called, Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman.  Come check the forum out, it's a pretty laid back group who bakes what they can when they can with no time pressure's on them.  There are a few recipes that are suggested for each month, and we simply bake the ones that we want to.