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Muffuletta (Including the Bread from Scratch)

Prep 45 min + 1–2 hr rise · Bake 30 min · Makes 1 muffuletta (4 righteous quarters) · Life stories: 0
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Ingredients

  • The bread, from scratch (recipe below)
  • The olive salad (also below)
  • Tons of provolone cheese, fresh sliced — smoked is best
  • Any meats you have/want, thin sliced is best: ham, turkey, salame, prosciutto

Steps

  1. Split the loaf horizontally.
  2. Spoon olive salad onto both cut faces, oil included. Be generous — the oil soaking into the bread is the whole point.
  3. Layer the meats, then the cheese. “Tons” is a unit of measurement here.
  4. Close it, press it down gently, and cut into quarters.
  5. Not traditional, but better: warm it in a 350°F oven for 10–15 minutes, until the cheese leans. The purists can write their own blog.

✏️ I've been to New Orleans. I like muffulettas.

Component: The Bread, From Scratch

Ingredients

  • 1 cup (240 ml) warm water
  • 1 tablespoon (12g) sugar
  • 2 teaspoons (6g) active dry yeast
  • 3 cups (375g) bread flour
  • 1½ teaspoons (9g) salt
  • 2 tablespoons (28g) vegetable shortening — softened butter also works, tested and approved
  • 1 egg, beaten (for egg wash)
  • 2 tablespoons (18g) sesame seeds

Steps

  1. Combine the warm water, sugar, and yeast in a small bowl. Let it sit 5–10 minutes, until the yeast dissolves and starts to foam. No foam = dead yeast. Start over with fresh yeast; do not negotiate with it.
  2. Combine the bread flour and salt in your mixer bowl. Add the shortening and mix with the dough hook about 30 seconds, then add the yeast mixture. Keep mixing 5–6 minutes — the dough is ready when it comes clean off the sides of the bowl.
  3. Move the dough to a well-oiled large bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let it rest 1–2 hours, until doubled in size.
  4. Heat the oven to 450°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  5. Punch the dough down to let the air out. Roll it into a 10–12 inch disc (see the rolling tip below), place it on the baking sheet, and let it rest 15 minutes while the oven finishes preheating. Brush with the beaten egg and sprinkle generously with sesame seeds.
  6. Once the oven is preheated: fill a baking dish with high sides with water and place it on the bottom rack — the high sides make it far easier to get in and out without sloshing. Slide the bread in. Bake 5 minutes, then carefully remove the water dish. (The steam gives the crust its start — it will vent at you.)
  7. Reduce the oven to 375°F and bake another 25 minutes, until golden brown. The loaf is done when it sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.

Component: Muffuletta Olive Salad

Ingredients

  • 1 cup (about 135g) pitted brined black olives, chopped
  • 1 cup (about 135g) large pimiento-stuffed olives, chopped
  • ½ cup (120 ml) extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 shallot, minced
  • 1 stalk celery, thinly chopped
  • Chopped flat-leaf parsley (optional)
  • 1–∞ cloves garlic, minced (garlic is good)
  • 2 teaspoons (5g) black pepper

Steps

  1. Chop everything that needs chopping. Combine it all in a bowl.
  2. Let it sit — at least an hour on the counter, ideally overnight in the fridge. The wait is the recipe.
  3. Corner-cutting clause: something very similar exists in a jar at Trader Joe's. If you're putting in the work to bake the bread from scratch, you've earned the shortcut — though for the record, this is about 10 minutes of chopping.

TIPS — from a person who has actually made this

  • Sift the flour through a colander to break up lumps — cheap insurance for any bread.
  • Rolling to 10–12 inches: that's roughly a large dinner plate. Roll from the center outward, giving the dough a quarter turn between passes. If it keeps springing back, walk away for five minutes — the dough relaxes, you win.
Muffuletta (Including the Bread from Scratch)
The cross-section, and the whole reason to do this: olive salad, meats, and provolone pressed into sesame bread.
Muffuletta (Including the Bread from Scratch)
The dough, rolled and proofed on the sheet pan with sesame on top, before it bakes.
Muffuletta (Including the Bread from Scratch)
Out of the oven — the baked loaf, golden and domed, ready to be split.
Muffuletta (Including the Bread from Scratch)
The same sandwich, halved on a plate. Layers visible, oil soaked in, plate optional but festive.
Muffuletta (Including the Bread from Scratch)
The baker, wearing a Central Grocery hat, holding a loaf Central Grocery did not bake. They invented the sandwich; the hat is our citation.
⚠ AI-Generated Nostalgia — 0% True

The Family Story Nobody Asked For

Every food blog has one. Ours is at the bottom, where it belongs, and was written by a robot with no family. Reading it is strictly optional and mildly discouraged.

The following events occurred in April of 2017, at 2 a.m., on or around Bourbon Street — a time and place where events famously do not stop occurring. Fog came up off the river and moved through the Quarter like it was looking for someone, and the gas lamps did that thing where they flicker exactly once as you pass beneath them. A fortune teller outside a shuttered voodoo shop looked up at me and said, 'You are going to eat something significant.' She was right.

I had been drinking Hand Grenades, which are real, and which I will describe only as follows: neon green, served in a plastic vessel shaped like munitions, and stronger than anything should legally be within city limits. I had three. By the second one I had fallen in with a bachelorette party from Ohio, whose maid of honor — a woman named Tammy who had clearly done this before — announced to no one and everyone that the only correct way to end a night like this was a muffuletta, and that she knew exactly where to get one at this hour.

Somewhere past the third block the night went quiet in the way New Orleans nights go quiet, which is to say not quiet at all, but haunted-sounding. A tour guide in a top hat pointed his cane at a balcony and said a name I didn't catch. The wrought iron dripped with what was probably condensation. And from an upstairs window — I never saw a face — a voice said, 'The olive salad has to sit overnight, baby.' A cold spot moved directly through me. The ghost was right. They usually are, about brining.

So I followed Tammy and eleven women in matching sashes through streets that did not appear to connect to each other, until the group stopped as one in front of it: Verti Marte, the 24-hour deli that is open at 2 a.m. because it is open at every a.m., staffed by people who have seen everything you are currently doing and several worse versions of it. Tammy pointed at the counter without breaking stride, the way a general indicates a hill. I ordered a muffuletta. It came across the counter wrapped in white paper, warm and heavy as a secret, and I ate it leaning against a wall built in the 1700s, which did not judge me, because it had seen the 1700s.

The purists will tell you the muffuletta was born at Central Grocery on Decatur Street in 1906, when Salvatore Lupo, a Sicilian grocer, watched workingmen juggle their bread, cheese, meat, and olive salad separately and thought: what if this were one object. The purists are correct.

In conclusion, the muffuletta is a bridge between worlds: the living and the dead, the hungry and the recently hungry, Bourbon Street and the ability to remember Bourbon Street. I woke the next afternoon with sesame seeds in my pocket and olive oil on a shirt I do not own. The recipe — which does not require you to be haunted, though it does not hurt — is above, where you found it.

The End. The recipe was above, where you already found it.