Giada De Laurentiis' Favorite Sandwich In Rome Is All About The Bread

Celebrity chef Giada de Laurentiis was born in Rome, Italy, and grew up in a large Italian-American family where food was an important part of life. There's one sandwich that she ate nearly every day as a child that she still returns to when visiting family in Rome. It's pizza bianca (white pizza) with fresh mortadella. The sandwich is a fairly simple affair that starts with the pizza bianca. "So, it's pizza, just no cheese, no tomato sauce. It's more like bread," de Laurentiis says in a 2024 YouTube video."Think of it like a pita, but better."

The pizza bianca is then stuffed with mortadella, a classic Italian cold cut that resembles bologna, but includes pork fat cubes — and sometimes chopped pistachios — and is flavored with myrtle berries and pepper. "I love mortadella," proclaims de Laurentiis. "It's like the best bologna on the planet." Her favorite version of this sandwich comes from L'Antico Forno Roscioli, a bakery on the Via dei Chiavari in Central Rome. "It's a classic Roman lunch," she says. Like de Laurentiis, celebrity chef Bobby Flay is also a pizza bianca fan, although he prefers his as a panini. So what makes pizza bianca so special and how does it differ from the American version? 

If you've eaten American white pizza, you may be a bit confused since the Roman version is something altogether different. It's a world away from the similarly named pizza style you'll find in most New York City pie spots. In the States, white pizza describes a traditional pie-shaped pizza that's made without marinara sauce but is laden with ricotta and mozzarella, olive oil, and lots of garlic. The Roman version of pizza bianca has no toppings whatsoever but can be stuffed with various fillings.

The dough for the Roman version is rolled out into long, flat sheets and brushed with olive oil to create a thin, crispy final product studded with salt. It has a nice crunch on the outside and a slightly soft interior. It's often eaten plain, but as Giada de Laurentiis mentions, it can also be stuffed with meat, like a pita pocket, making for a delicious sandwich. While de Laurentiis claims her ideal last meal would be a dark-chocolate-chip cookie from the Manhattan bakery Levain, we're betting a pizza bianca stuffed with mortadella might be a close second.