This is not intended to be snarky either. Well I am just naturally snarky so…
Just because something was invented in 1982 or three or whenever, doesn’t mean that it can’t have tradition. So I guess we have to decide what year something has to be invented prior to in order to be considered steeped in tradition? Silly Italians with their ciabatta and vodka sauce.
I’m old and decrepit and dated, and for several restaurants used to use this bread specifically from several bakers in town. And there was definitely a specific way of doing it, before the explosion of everything “ciabatta.”
I would say someone could call anything ciabatta just like anybody could call bread with a hole in it a bagel.
“Traditional” is elongated, relatively flattish, flour dusted, crusty chewy, large airy holes.
I hate to say this but the wiki actually has a really good photo. The airy holes are distinct.
Agreed! My keyword was you can’t have a “loaded” sandwich on real ciabatta. American sandwiches IMHO have a tendency to be filled much more than European ones. I think.
But even with a loaded US sandwich using a tasteless, soft roll (or bread) isn’t something to improve the quality of the sandwich. A good sandwich is about the bread and the filling - both should have the highest quality (that’s, at least for me, is also the reason why a Langers pastrami sandwich is much better than the sad example they sell at Katz - the pastrami might be comparable in quality but not the bread)
completely. I seem to recall US bread and rolls in the 60s, that you could get at a bakery or deli (not prepackaged at the grocery store), had much more chew and a better crust overall. Didn’t make a difference if it was an Italian, Jewish, German, Polish, etc immigrant family store— all good bread. Lots of those places closed in the 70s and 80s and it really wasn’t until the late 80s/90s that the US rediscovered non industrial bread. I think a lot of the general public still prefers soft and squishy.
Totally- I don’t know much about ciabatta so I was wondering if maybe at (or since) its invention there was some kind of specific qualities that denote it as ciabatta. I mean, if anybody would be willing to throw down over granular details about carbs it would be Italy.
To veer back into sandwich territory, it is kind of cool to imagine how one might imagine an optimized filling for ciabatta like you were talking about originally. It’s hard to imagine separating a lot of sandwiches from their traditional breads
I don’t like the hydraulic press experience of eating a ciabatta sandwich. Whatever it’s filled with often just comes out the other side you’re biting into. It probably works best as a thin layer of filling, but the bread is so dense and chewy and has such structural force, nothing really counters it.
Not to say that I haven’t tolerated or even had a pleasant experience with ciabatta. But never as a sandwich. Usually to dip olive oil/balsamic or to mop up sauce from a plate. I think that’s probably the best application for it. It works best as a sponge to pick up sauce. And because you need to eat it with something that adds a lot of moisture. Though even then, I wish it was focaccia.
Is there any sandwich application where you would opt for ciabatta over focaccia? I was looking at Italian sandwiches to see if I could come across a good application of ciabatta. Just when I think I’ve seen a mouthwatering ciabatta I’d like to eat, it turns out to be focaccia.
If burgers count, the double double is obviously the most iconic, and Office Burger is also definitive in its field.
I love Ba Le but I feel like it’s not the institution that places like Che Cali and Lee’s are so I’d go with one of those despite them being inferior.
I feel like a proper list would include a torta of some kind but I don’t know that there is a definitive version. Maybe one of the cemitas from Don Adrian?
No disrespect to either of those choices but if burgers are on the table then the pastrami burger is my nomination. I’m not saying they’re the best burger/sandwich, but as a transplant to LA they stood out to me right away as a uniquely southern California invention. Born in the formerly Jewish Boyle Heights at burger stands that seem to be mostly Greek owned, and disseminated to Utah after picking it up from a Turkish dude in Orange County. I mean, what the what?!
Sorry, the link is NY Times and behind a paywall. There are a few articles about the history of the pastrami burger but the originals don’t pop up on a browser search any more and I can’t remember where they were to try and Wayback Machine it!
Thanks for linking that! That’s certainly one of the write-ups that I rediscover every couple years when thinking about pastrami burgers but not quite the one I remember. There was another article (I believe also on Serious Eats but not this one) that had a link to the earliest article I’ve seen on the subject (I think the 80s). There might have also been an LA Weekly article by Jonathan Gold that linked to an earlier article…
Thanks for that bio! Also, I totally had it backwards that they “learned to build pastrami burgers from a Los Angeles man of Turkish descent”, not the other way around. Edited my OP
