Instructions: Slice the loaf of Italian bread in two and warm in an oven until toasty.

Place the cheeses on one half and the meats on the other. Thickness and quantity of cheese and meat can vary with each individual, but one layer of each ingredient is standard. Cover the half that has the meat on it with olive salad. Put the two halves together and cut in quarters.

There are three crucial elements to making a good muffaletta:

1. Fresh, quality ingredients

2. Good olive salad. The Central Grocery in New Orleans, which probably makes the definitive New Orleans Muffaletta, now sells their olive salad by the jar. Its available in groceries across New Orleans, but I dont know if it is distributed past here.

3. Warming the bread
*before* making the sandwich. Many people put everything together on the bread and shove the whole thing in the oven. This is wrong. When you remove the sandwich, the cheese and the olive salad are way too hot. If you heat the bread before making the sandwich, the cheese will melt on the warm bread, the meat will warm up, and the olive salad will stay around room temperature.

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