This Old-School Italian Sandwich Brings Serious Pizza Energy

Just south of Naples, the city that created modern pizza in the 1700s, an Italian sandwich was created around two centuries later that can best be described as pizza as a sandwich. The Panuozzo di Gragnano is a giant panino (Italian toasted sandwich) made with pizza dough shaped into a long oval, baked, sliced down the middle, and filled with cheese, vegetables, and meats, then placed back in the pizza oven to get a distinctive crisp and char. Created in 1983 by Giuseppe Mascolo, the pizzaiolo at Pizzeria Mascolo in the town of Gragnano, hence the name. He was just trying to entertain his children by making something other than pizza.

The original version was stuffed with pancetta, mozzarella, sausage, and arugula, but variations of the sandwich are now served at shops all over the region of Campania. The original name is trademarked by the Mascolo family, so you may see it under different names, like Panuozzo Napoletano, at different shops. You can also find a smaller version of the sandwich under the name saltimbocca if you have less of an appetite or your travel buddies aren't interested in sharing.

The difference is in the bread, or rather, dough. Making pizza dough is not the same as making bread. Ken Forkish, the author of the seminal book on pizza making, "The Elements of Pizza," had to learn this for himself. Co-founder of Ken's Artisan Pizza, which makes some of the best pies in the U.S., he started off as a bread baker. Even after writing his first book on pizza, it wasn't until he went to Naples to study with its famed pizzaiolos for his second book that he learned that making pizza dough was very different from everything he had made before. 

He writes, "Bread wants to expand to its maximum volume; pizza does not. Pizza dough has structural needs — to stretch without breaking and without being too elastic. I knew this before, but I was still thinking of pizza as a kind of bread." So instead of a sourdough or wheat bread, this sandwich is on Neapolitan pizza crust, complete with its fluffiness, a slight chew, and some delicious char.

It's also different from a homemade calzone, which is baked once.  The Panuozzo di Gragnano is popped back into the oven once the sandwich is assembled. This gives it extra crispness