Well Bread

By Naperville Magazine
Appears in the March 2025 issue.

By Peter Gianopulos

Pronto serves up “famous” Italian sandwiches

Flour. Water. Salt. Heaven.

For Peter and Dana Burdi, no bread scrunches and crunches quite like schiacciata, an Italian flatbread that is the star attraction at Pronto Italian Sandwiches, their sandwich shop in Hinsdale, with a new location opening soon at 221 S. Washington St. in downtown Naperville.

Back in 2022, while visiting daughter Isabella in Milan, the Burdis discovered a cozy seven-table sandwich shop, where an Italian nonna with flour-caked fingers served them their first schiacciata sandwich. It was their definition of a culinary epiphany.

“For me schiacciata combines the best of ciabatta and focaccia into one bread,” Peter says. When preparing the bread, it’s customary to squeeze down the top of the dough—schiacciata means “pressed”—to keep it from rising too high. The resulting bread boasts a crackly golden second skin pockmarked with craggy crevices and a warm interior laced with thin air pockets—they’re almost like rubber bands of air, Dana says. The result is a bread with both tenderness and elasticity.

Upon returning home, the Burdis interviewed numerous bakeries, but no one could re-create what they experienced in Milan. So they decided to bake their own schiacciata. They imported double-zero flour from Italy and began conducting experiments at their restaurant Il Poggiolo in Hinsdale. Working alongside chef Saul Maya, they perfected a recipe that takes four and a half hours to complete.

The original Pronto operates out of Il Poggiolo during lunch hours, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., offering more than half a dozen schiacciata sandwiches, each named after an Italian icon. The Tarantino, for example, is slathered with a garlic aïoli and stuffed with turkey, white cheddar, and micro greens. The Scorsese pairs mortadella with Burrata, arugula, hot honey, and a schmear of pistachio cream, while the salami-based Sinatra is piled high with sun-dried tomato and finished with a pecorino spread.

For those craving a more traditional sub, Pronto also serves Toscanino torpedo bread sandwiches, including a carnivore’s dream of capicola, mortadella, and salami with provolone and a mild giardiniera. But it’s the schiacciata that seems to have dazzled guests the most.

“The response from people has been incredible,” Dana says. So much so that the Burdis opened a second Pronto location at O’Hare airport last fall.

The best bread ever to come out of an Italian oven? We’ll let you decide. But the Burdis say the most heartwarming compliment they ever received came from Isabella. “Oh, yeah,” Dana says. “She’s our resident food critic; when we won her approval, we knew we had something special.”

Photos: Pronto Italian Sandwiches