Information on the Muffaletta Sandwich

Since the comments I had on the post about Muffalettas were about not knowing what the sandwich was, I decided I'd better post a link to some information about it.

Wikipedia seems to have some pretty good information on the sandwich all in one place. This entry includes the ingredients and the origins of the sandwich although it doesn't give an actual recipe.

The muffalettas I had in the New Orleans area (I actually lived in Mississippi but the sandwiches were popular there also) were on a thick bread the size of a dinner plate and filled with Italian ham, cheese, & salami as well as the Italian Olive Salad.

The center of the bread was scooped out to make room for the other ingredients and that's why I was taken with the recipe from Rachel Ray.  Instead of the thick bread of which much was thrown away, she used pizza crusts.  Italian bread and pizza crust are made from the same ingredients in the same way but just take different forms.  The taste was the same - crusty on the outside with those toasted sesame seeds - with the rest of the ingredients well-contained so no olive oil dripping on your clothes or bits of olive salad falling on your lap!

If you ever go to New Orleans and you're a meat eater who likes olives, be sure to order a muffaletta!  Like the Cafe du Monde's coffee and beignets, the muffaletta is another New Orleans institution!

Domestic Goddess Day

Some of you may know that I lived close enough to New Orleans at one time to know about their muffalettas.  I used to buy one and it would last me for several days.  I thought they were wonderful.

Since then I've moved far away from New Orleans plus have become a vegetarian and put thoughts of a muffaletta out of my mind.  Then Rachel Ray had a recipe on her show that I was pretty sure I could make using non-meat ingredients.  So I gave it a whirl.

It took most of the day yesterday but I made the olive salad and the bread from scratch and put together two wonderful, fragrant and ultimately delicious muffalettas!  I made one of them from standard ingredients since my husband does eat meat and he loved it.

Art and creativity take many forms and yesterday they took the form of homemade muffalettas!