Pressed Italian Picnic Sandwiches are packed full of flavor and perfect for brunches, parties, baby showers, bridal showers, picnics, and more. Your guests will be impressed!
Picnics are a family favorite of ours. Spring, Summer, Fall, we like picnicking during them all! Pressed sandwiches are a perfect picnic item. They are also great for serving at luncheons, and baby/bridal showers. They are easy to put together and require making ahead so it is the perfect party and picnic food. This particular sandwich is bursting with flavor. I used a walnut pesto spread because I enjoy the flavor and slight crunch of the walnuts as opposed to the more traditional pine nuts. Sun-dried tomatoes provide an air of sophistication while pepperocinis provide a little zing.
Can I change up the toppings?
Absolutely! Feel free to adjust the toppings according to your own personal taste preferences, and leave out the items you may not like. As written, this recipe provides a lot of strong and powerful flavors combined together.
How do I press a sandwich?
Your sandwich(es) need to be placed between two flat items and then weighted on top. To achieve this, we recommend simply using two baking sheets and stacking heavy objects like books on top.
What kind of bread should I use?
This recipe uses focaccia. We find that focaccia has the perfect texture for creating a pressed sandwich. If you are unable to find focaccia for purchase you can make it yourself using our recipe, or you can use a similar bread like ciabatta.
If you like this recipe, you may be interested in these other delicious picnic recipe ideas:
Watch the video below where we will walk you through every step of the recipe with a video demonstration.
Great recipe! We tried it tonight and prepped it the day before. So many delicious flavors melding together. I wasn’t sure the type of olives so I bought green. Videos shows black. Green worked well too! Could you share the nutrition information for this recipe? I will be making this again. I may switch out salami for black Forrest ham next time and may attempt focaccia bread.
This is so good. Made it with ham instead of chicken but every thing else the same.
Great recipe, very yummy. Just a note, wrapping the two pans very tightly in plastic wrap is easier than trying to find sufficient weight to press the pans together.
Made two of these awesome sandwiches; My lunch is covered for the 2 weeks 🙂
Thank you for the recipe. It looks very good and I hope try it soon. The tutorial was good. one suggestion though, the use of the word fricken turned a very professional tutorial into some thing amateur. I usually have a child looking over my shoulder. I didn’t think that I wouldn’t have to check for language first. Like I said, it really was a good tutorial.
I’m sorry you feel that way.
Hi Rachel,
Thanks for your recipe! I’m can’t wait to make these sandwiches – I needed something impressive for a picnic first date.. They look delicious. Do you think ciabatta bread would work just as well? And, BTW, I totally agree with you! Pine nuts ARE fricken expensive! I totally loved your video – wouldn’t change a thing!
Denise
Yes!! I’ve made this recipient twice, and now in the process of making the third. They are so yummy and cute! I used store bought pesto but may branch out and make my own pesto. I loved your video and wouldn’t change a thing as well ?
Hey Rachel, thanks for the fricken great recipe! It was fricken awesome and everyone at my picnic fricken loved them.