Visitor Information
Muffoletta festival, bread, sandwich and salad
First posted 3 July 2003 at 1840 GMT
Last updated 25 July 2003 at 1306 GMT
By Joe O'Connell,
Research Specialist
LOS ANGELES, California, USA — Muffoletta has many different
spellings and many different definitions.
Festival of the muffoletta
Each year, the feast day of St Martin of Tours is celebrated on November 11.
In Sicily, residents celebrate the feast day with festivals.
Residents of Reizi and the Province of Caltinessetta in central Siciliy
(see the map, below), celebrate the Muffoletta Festival.
For the festival, residents traditionally bake muffoletta loaves.
These are a special, round, dense Italian bread, usually covered with
fennel seeds. Residents fill the muffoletta with ricotta or other
cheeses and sausages. During the festival, residents in Reizi
offer thousands of muffoletta loaves to the visitors in the piazza who
come to celebrate, to eat the muffoletta bread, and to sample the year's
new wine from local vintners.
Muffoletta products
Many know the muffoletta
as the best bread, the
best salad and the best sandwich ever invented. Unfortunately,
only a tiny minority of the world community has been given the great
pleasure of enjoying the bread, the salad and the sandwich.
Muffoletta describes three different products:
- The unique Sicilian bread, round in shape, dense, and celebrated
in Sicily on St. Martin’s feast day every November 11;
- The incomparably rich olive salad, perfected at the Central
Grocery to complement its sandwich; and
- The famous New Orleans sandwich, invented at the Central Grocery
on Decatur Street.
Muffoletta can be spelled more than a dozen ways, including
muffoletta, muffolette, muffolatta, muffaletta and muffuletta.
Muffoletta (our preferred spelling, for the reasons explained here),
however spelled and wherever served, describes a bread, sandwich and
salad of the finest taste, texture and appearance.
Around the world, few bakers, markets and restaurants sell the
authentic muffoletta bread, sandwich or salad. Change has begun,
however, as the world community discovers the delicious, healthy,
ancient Sicilian bread and the hundred-year-old New Orleans sandwich and
salad, which share the name “muffoletta”.
Muffoletta Ltd. provides authoritative information to the world
community about muffoletta, including its history, recipes and secrets
for finding the real muffoletta.
Joe O'Connell is senior research specialist for Muffoletta Ltd.,
the official resource for information about the authentic muffoletta.
Related information
- How is it spelled?
- Where was the bread invented?
- What is the authentic way of building a muffoletta sandwich?
- Where can I find the ingredients to try a muffoletta?
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