Italian Bread and Mortadella

Bread and mortadella is the perfect snack!

Mortadella is an Italian salami whose origins as well as in Emilia Romagna can be traced on most of the national territory. In the past, in fact, various types of mortadella were produced with different formats and characterized by various ingredients: large, small, very spicy mortadella or simply flavored with pepper.

Even today, for example, a mortadella is produced in the municipality of Campotosto in the province of L'Aquila characterized by an ovoid shape, prepared with a lard bar inside the product and flavored with salt, pepper and white wine. In Ragusa, on the other hand, a mortadella is produced with donkey or buffalo meat while around Lake Orta and in the lower Valsesia in Piedmont liver mortadella are prepared both raw and cooked.

If in the "cook's book" of Venetian origin mortadella was prepared with boiled pork liver, eggs and cheese, instead Platina tells us about its size and, reporting a recipe by Maestro Martino, tells us that mortadella was prepared the size of an egg. But it is with the mortadella of Bologna that this salami reaches a certain notoriety outside Italy until it reaches a wide fame. In 1661 Cardinal Giacomo Farnese in Bologna issued a notice in which he condemned those who tried in some way to prepare mortadella with low quality ingredients, thus ruining the good reputation of the city of Bologna which was already famous for its production of cold cuts. In 1664 in the work: "The economy of the citizen in the villa" by the Marquis Vincenzo Tanara, appeared instead the first written recipe to prepare mortadella. It contained the exact quantities of spices and pork to be used. In fact, in those years the mortadella of Bologna had already achieved some success: Ovidio Montalbani, for example, a well-known doctor and gourmet, praised it calling it the most suitable salami for the pleasures of the throat; François Deseine, in the description of the best foods in Italy counted the famous salami of Bologna among the best foods encountered. In the city of Felsinea the mortadella producers, on the other hand, to maintain a primacy in production, were very careful not to spread their recipe and to keep it secret. By the way, the Dominican father Giovanni Battista Labat, who lived in Bologna for some years, in the account of his travels, reported the difficulties encountered to find the true recipe of mortadella of Bologna. But the success of this sausage grew over time to extend beyond Europe.

At the end of the nineteenth century the brothers Medardo and Ugo Bassi obtained a certain response in the Bologna area as mortadella producers and were therefore sent to the Universal Exhibition in Philadelphia. From 1873 mortadella, which was previously exported whole, began to be sent out of Italy even cut into slices: after being sliced it was in fact closed in a tin box. The invention of the slicer is attributed to Luigi Giusti and it is believed that he invented it to make up for the amount of time needed for hand cutting.

Among the most particular and typical cold cuts of Italy, of those that make a simple sandwich a work of art, we would certainly put the delicious mortadella on the podium. It will be a less elegant choice of raw ham and bresaola... But it boasts a centuries-old history and, after so many centuries since its birth, it is still one of the favorite options for young and old when it comes to a nice sandwich or a platter of cold cuts.

 Which bread do I recommend combining with a good mortadella to fully enjoy its round and delicate flavor?

If, on the other hand, your goal is to taste a particularly qualitative Mortadella and evaluate its flavor as much as possible in purity, the obvious choice is to opt for a slice of "sciapo" bread, that is without salt and not too tasty, which well supports the consistency of the sliced mortadella with a full-bodied crust and a soft interior but that does not contaminate the taste.