Focaccia col Formaggio
Focaccia col formaggio is a Ligurian cheese flatbread, and the name does two jobs: a cheese-topped risen slab almost anywhere, and Recco's paper-thin two-sheet build the EU fenced off in 2015.
Italy
Focaccia Barese
Bari builds its focaccia on boiled potato worked into durum semolina, a crumb that drinks oil and tomato juice without giving way, topped with whole olives and oregano.
Focaccia Barese Farcita
Bari's thick potato-crumbed focaccia, baked with crushed cherry tomatoes and olives, split horizontally and filled with mortadella. The bread is already seasoned, so the fill stays light.
Fettunta con Prosciutto
Grilled bread rubbed with garlic, drizzled with olive oil, topped with prosciutto; open-faced.
Farinata in Panino
Chickpea flour flatbread (farinata) in a roll; similar to Sicilian panelle but different texture.
Erbazzone
Reggio Emilia's baked chard-and-Parmigiano pie, cut in squares and eaten from breakfast counters to aperitivo. Newly IGP in 2026, with the mountain rice variant left out of Brussels' approved recipe.
Cuoppo Napoletano
Paper cone filled with fried foods (zeppole, arancini, frittatine, crocchè); street food, sometimes eaten sandwich-style.
Crostino Toscano
Toasted bread with chicken liver pâté (fegatini); not quite a sandwich but iconic Tuscan bread preparation.
Crostino al Tartufo
Crostino al tartufo is warm toast under the thinnest layer of black-truffle crema, butter and fungus worked smooth. An Umbrian open-face toast using the smallest amount of truffle that still reads.
Crescia Sfogliata
Urbino's crescia sfogliata is laminated like puff pastry: lard folded through dozens of sheets, egg and black pepper in the dough, cooked on a hot testo until it shatters apart in flaky layers.
Crescia con Salsiccia e Spinaci
Crescia with sausage and spinach.
Crescia con Prosciutto e Rucola
Crescia with prosciutto and arugula.
Crescentina (Tigelle)
A palm-sized leavened disc baked between chestnut-earth moulds, split warm and dressed by hand with cunza, lard pounded with garlic and rosemary, across a long Modenese table.
Cotoletta Sandwich con Rucola
Rocket is the anti-tomato on a Milanese cutlet: bitter and bone-dry where tomato is wet, it lifts the fried crumb without softening the snap. The cotoletta panino with the soggy ending designed out.
Cotoletta Sandwich con Pomodoro
A cold Milanese veal cutlet under fresh drained tomato: the crust fried in butter, the juice held off it, a summer panino where the whole craft is keeping the shatter dry long enough to bite.
Ciabatta Siciliana
Sicily's dressed bread, the cunzato, is cucina povera at its barest: warm bread flooded with oil, oregano, and salt, all a poor kitchen had. On a ciabatta, what you add on top is a map of the island.
Ciabatta con Verdure Grigliate
Ciabatta with grilled vegetables.
Ciabatta con Roast Beef
Ciabatta with roast beef.
Borlengo
The borlengo is batter swirled across a hot copper sole until it sets crisp as a wafer, brushed with cunza, lard pounded with garlic and rosemary, and folded in the hand in the Modenese hills.