Panino Napoletano, the Neapolitan roll with the filling baked in

In most of Italy a panino is bread split and filled. In Naples, panino napoletano names something else: a dough rolled out into a sheet, scattered with filling, rolled up into a log, cut into rounds and baked. The meat and cheese end up inside the crumb instead of between two halves. If the word games around panino and panini confuse you, we untangle them in our note on panino vs panini.

The usual Neapolitan filling is salame and provolone, often with egg and black pepper, in a soft enriched dough from the same family as the Easter casatiello. The casatiello itself is a ring-shaped Easter loaf with whole eggs set into its top; you can think of the panino as its single-portion, any-day cousin. Every bakery has its own version. Ours is filled with salami, mortadella, prosciutto and cheese, baked into the dough.

Neapolitans pick it up from the bakery case around eleven, when breakfast is a memory and lunch is still a couple of hours away. It is savory, filling and easy to eat on foot, which puts it in the same tradition as the rest of the city's street food, mapped out in a guide to eating in the streets of Naples.

Its closest relative on our counter is the Parigina, another Neapolitan bakery item, which layers ham, mozzarella and tomato between soft dough and puff pastry and is sold by the slice.

Both are correct. Early in the day the cheese inside is still soft and the crust gives a little. A few hours later the roll firms up and the cured meat comes forward, which is how it often travels in Naples: in a paper bag, eaten later. We bake it here every morning.

It is a counter item and is not on our Uber Eats menu, so this is one to pick up in person.