Pesto Bites – Sybaritica

When I first conceived of this idea, it struck me that what I had in my mind was very similar to the Provencal specialty known as Pissaladière, except that the traditional topping of caramelized onion is replaced with Pesto (in this case my own homemade Pesto Piccante)

Initially, I thought of doing a single, large, rectangular ‘bread’, but then I decided to make individual, round ‘bites’ as you see pictured above … [

I had already made a batch of bread dough for a number of different uses and, for this recipe, I just used enough to make little ‘rounds’ a couple of inches in diameter.

For each round, I spread over a teaspoon of pesto and the placed a couple of trimmed strips of anchovy fillet. In a large Pissaladière, these are usually placed in a lattice across the whole surface with slices of black olive in each ‘square’. My pesto already contains olives and, instead, I have used capers.

The rounds were baked at 350 for about 20 minutes. This was about 5 minutes longer than I intended as I got distracted by a telephone call and overcooked them slightly. The result was still very nice but I also discovered that, while the thickness of the dough would be appropriate for a larger dish made for cutting into sections, the ratio of thickness to diameter here was a bit much … next time, I will roll the dough a little thinner… It is a nice idea to play around with, though…