Muffuletta

Steps

1. chop20 min
   by knife on a board, not in a food processor
   green olives + black olives + giardiniera + pepperoncini, chopped to roughly the size of a small pea — fine enough that the relish spreads and stays put on the bread, coarse enough that the pickled vegetables still read as separate crunch against the olives. A processor turns the whole thing to tapenade in about four pulses, and a smooth paste has no texture to contribute and slides off the meat. Drain everything properly first; brine carried into the relish dilutes the oil and makes the bread wet rather than oiled
2. marinate480 min
   covered, refrigerated, at least 8 hours and ideally overnight
   chopped olives and pickles + garlic + oregano + basil + red wine vinegar + olive oil + black pepper, stirred together and left = the olive salad. This wait is not a resting suggestion, it is the technique: raw minced garlic and dried oregano need hours in oil to give up what they hold, and the oil in turn takes on their flavour so that the fat carrying into the bread later tastes of something. Used the same day, the relish tastes like chopped olives with a hard raw-garlic edge. It keeps two weeks refrigerated and improves for the first several days; if the oil has set solid in the cold, let it come back to room temperature before you use it
3. slice5 min
   long serrated knife, one clean horizontal cut
   the loaf, split through the equator into two even discs. The bread must be dense enough to take on oil without collapsing — a soft supermarket round will go to pulp. If your loaf is on the soft side, pull out a shallow layer of crumb from each half with your fingers: that both makes room for filling and removes the spongiest part of the bread, which is the part that turns to paste first
4. top10 min
   relish on both cut faces, meats in thin overlapping sheets
   bottom disc + half the olive salad spread to the edge + capicola + salami + mortadella + provolone laid in flat overlapping layers + the remaining olive salad spread on the underside of the top disc, then closed. Spreading relish on both faces is what gets oil into both halves of the loaf rather than soaking one and leaving the other dry. Lay the meats as sheets, not folded slabs, and slice the cheese rather than shredding it: the stack has to stay flat and even or the sandwich will not cut into clean wedges. Take the filling right to the crust — a bare rim means the first bite of every wedge is dry bread
5. rest45 min
   wrapped tight in foil or plastic, weighted under a sheet pan, room temperature or refrigerated
   the closed loaf, pressed under something flat and moderately heavy — a sheet pan with a few cans on it — for at least half an hour and up to a few hours. Pressing does two jobs at once: it drives the oil out of the relish and into the crumb, which is the whole point of the construction, and it compacts the layers so the sandwich holds together under a knife. Weight it evenly and do not crush it; the target is a firm loaf, not a flattened one. If it has been refrigerated, bring it back toward room temperature before serving — cold mutes the olive salad and stiffens the fat in the cured meats
6. slice5 min
   serrated knife, sawing not pressing, into quarters, sixths or eighths
   the pressed loaf, cut into wedges and served at room temperature. Saw through it rather than bearing down, or the top disc slides and the filling shears out sideways. For the warmed New Orleans version, put the foil-wrapped loaf into a 350°F oven for five to seven minutes before cutting, just long enough to soften the provolone — longer than that and the bread dries out and the relish stops tasting fresh