Summer Sandwich

This has to be my all-time, favorite summer sandwich.  I have to admit, when it's 90°F outside, I don't do much cooking.  I do spend a lot of time thinking about what to fix for dinner that requires little to no cooking.  This sandwich is my twist on a BLT.  The tomatoes and bacon are present plus I've added roasted turkey and guacamole.  Lettuce doesn't keep well in my house so unless I know we're going to use the whole head in our meal, it rarely gets thrown in the mix.

I prepare the guacamole using minimal ingredients.  This one has jalapenos, avocados, sea salt and lime juice. I mash them together using a mortar and pestle I purchased from Ikea.  I never use a recipe, I just add everything to taste.  If you like your guac spicy, go heavy on the jalapenos.  I did try to dice the jalapenos pretty fine so I wouldn't bite into a chunk of heat while eating my sandwich.

Next, I spread the guacamole on a whole grain bread.  I made this 9-Grain loaf but you can find similar, yummy specimens at Wegman's (7-Grain Sourdough Loaf) or at Super Target (Archer Farms Artisan Harvest Grain Loaf).

I try to build the sandwich so the tomatoes are in the middle.  Layering the roasted turkey first, helps to create a barrier and prevents the bread from getting soggy.  This turkey was thin sliced from the deli counter at my local grocery store.

Next, I add the tomatoes.  These tomatoes were fresh from my local farmers' market.  The tomatoes really make this a seasonal sandwich.  I'm very picky about my tomatoes.  I will only eat them when they are the reddest ripe at the height of the season.  I sliced these as thin as I could.  All the layers create a tall sandwich and I wanted to make sure it was easy to eat.

Finally, I piled the crispy bacon on top.  This bacon also came from my local farmers' market.  It's a lightly smoked, thicker cut.  I like to bake my bacon on a cookie sheet in the oven.  Frying bacon on the stove top with toddlers underfoot is a little cumbersome and nerve-wrecking.  I lay the slices on the sheet so they are just barely touching, put them in the oven at 375°F, and turn them every 6-8 minutes until they're nice and crisp.  Then I make sure to save all the bacon grease for a later recipe (bacon fat makes everything taste better!).

That's it.  To finish, I put the lid on the sandwich and cut it in half.  This is a highly requested item in my house. My kids tend to steal everyone's bacon before they eat the remainder of their sandwiches but the rest of us enjoy the complexity of textures and flavors created in this easy summer treat.

Ultra? Maybe. Super? No Way!

Did you ever wonder how a box of Fruit Loops cereal can be slapped with a Whole Grain Council seal of approval?  Burger King's buns are WGC approved too.  Kellogs and Burger King are using "ultragrain flour" or "white wheat flour" in these products.  Ultragrain was first developed by ConAgra Mills (it has since been marketed as "white wheat flour" by other millers).  Here's what they have to say about the product:

"ConAgra Mills, the maker of Ultragrain, developed a patented technology that delivers whole grain flour with the same particle size as traditional refined white flour. The Ultragrain milling process retains the fiber, protein, vitamins, minerals and other phytonutrients concentrated within the bran and germ, while yielding whole grain wheat flour with a taste, ultrasmooth texture and appearance more similar to traditional refined white flour." 

I have a different take.  I try not to be too anti-GMO (genetically modified organism) because I would drive myself insane worrying about the repercussions of this process.  However, this is the best example of how a GMO directly affects me and my family.  Ultragrain flour comes from an entirely different plant than whole wheat flour...it's more than just the milling.

When this product was new to the market, I trained with the ConAgra technology rep on how to use Ultragrain flour to make bread.   The flour requires a significant autolyse time.  Autolyse is a time during which the flour and water are slightly mixed and allowed to rest.  The flour sucks up as much of the water as it can.  Because of this intense absorption, the final mix time is decreased and the dough is super hydrated yet still easy to work with.  Lots of water = open cell structure = big air holes = yum!  Without this autolyse, Ultragrain will start to break down the dough.  It's very finiky.  In addition to the autolyse, the flour behaves a little like a rye flour in the mixer.  If it is over-mixed it will turn gummy and good structure will never be achieved.

After doing signifigant market research, ConAgra determined that Ultragrain flour was undetectable by the average consumer up to 30% of the flour weight.  This means Kellogs can use 70% white flour and 30% ultragrain flour in their Fruit Loops and no one will be the wiser.   Funny, 30% is the minimum amount of whole grains needed in the dough to get the WGC seal of approval.  I'm no conspiracy theorist but I may be onto something here.

Ultragrain flour has a very distinct taste.  It's a little bitter and a little I-can't-put-my-finger-on-it.  I can sniff out ultragrain flour faster than a pig can find a truffle.  Maybe it's because I know it's there...it's everywhere.  Cereals, burger buns, Sara Lee pound cake, everyone is jumping on the whole grain band wagon.  These companies are trying to save Americans from themselves by sneaking good-for-yous into previously bad-for-you stuff, like Fruit Loops.  The Whole Grain Council doesn't care how much sugar you put on a product to mask the off-putting flavor of the ultragrain flour as long as each serving has 8 grams of whole grain.

That big grocery store chain I used to work for wants to do away with white bread all together.  A directive came down from the very top to make all breads using whole grains, even the baguettes.  The first bread they switched over was the basic Italian loaf, a huge seller.  They did not tell the customers they changed the bread they loved only that it now contains 1 serving of whole grains per slice.  A couple weeks ago, I was standing next to the bread counter and I overheard a woman asking for her Italian bread back "I used to buy 4 loaves a week."  So much for undetectible.

My baker friend, the mad scientist behind the whole grain switch, is trying to create a sweet potato brioche using the ultragrain flour.  I said yuck, he said if there's enough butter and sugar in the dough, it can't be bad.  Maybe he's on to something or maybe he could join forces with the fruit loop gang.  I tried his sweet potato bread and it was pretty tastey except for that noticably ultragrain aftertaste.

I know I'm not the typical American bread consumer but if I want wheat bread, I want wheat bread.  I want to see the flecks of bran and taste the nuttiness of the flour.  In the same thought, if I want white bread, I want white bread.  There is a time and a place for everything.  This whole scenario creates the same image for me as does the 300 pound woman ordering "diet" coke at the McDonald's drive thru.

Mangez Brioche

Marie Antoinette got a bad wrap.  Everyone has heard about her "Let them eat cake" quip but in reality that's just a bad translation.  What she really said was "Laissez-les manger du brioche."  Since there is no English equivalent to brioche, it wound up historically solidified as cake.  Of course the villagers didn't have access to this rich buttery delicacy any more than they had access to cake however it just doesn't sound as bad when you know the reality of the quote.

Traditionally, brioche dough is baked into "a tete" shapes.  "A tete"  means "with head."  I've always wondered if this shape came about after Marie Antoinette's head rolled off the guiolltine.  Personally, I think they look a little more like boobies. Although, I am currently nursing my son every two hours and everything looks a little like boobies these days...

Baking perfect brioche a tete is a difficult skill to master.  In culinary school, I had to shape perfect tetes on my practical examination in order to graduate.   If you don't shape them just right, the heads like to bobble to one side instead of resting in the center.  They are a rare site to see in bakeries.  I made them at The Patisserie but no one appreciated their grandeur so I stopped putting them on display.

Brioche is my absolute favorite dough to make and it also sums up the reason I became a baker.  You can not rush this dough!  It is very temperamental.  All the ingredients except for the butter are mixed until the gluten in the flour is developed.  If the butter is added upfront, the gluten strands will slip slide around and never fully develop.  The butter accounts for 80% of the flour weight in this dough so we're talking about a lot of butter.  (That's why it tastes sooo good!)  Once the gluten is developed, the butter gets added little by little until it's all incorporated.  This is the best part.  I stand by the mixer with a huge bowl of butter cubes and a cup of coffee, patiently waiting for the dough to do it's thing.  It's kind of like feeding bread to the ducks at the park. The dough then starts to have a teenage phase where it separates and looks really ugly and awkward. Just when you think it will never come back together it starts thwacking against the side of the bowl and curling up the dough hook.  It's finished...a beautiful, silky smooth dough!

Brioche was one of the formulas I worked tirelessly on while baking for Wegmans and one of the reasons I stopped baking for Wegmans.  In order for a bread to make it to production in every store, a corporate board has to agree on the product.  The members of the board have never studied bread or any sort of culinary arts for that matter.  Once, they thought that we should add more butter to the challah dough (if you're Jewish or a baker, you should be laughing your tete off right now).  Suffice to say, it was very difficult to get them to agree on anything.  The head corporate baker used to have a laugh by changing quantities of ingredients by a few grams just to be able to tell them he upped the sugar, honey or whatever they were complaining about that week.  One of the members of the board was the regional manager for the Rochester, Buffalo area.  He was a huge (read: fat) guy who wasn't very subtle in his approach.  One day he came into the store where I baked and asked me if I had any of that "Bree-otch-ee" to take his wife.  When I figured out that he was asking for Brioche and not a venerial disease, I knew it was time to get out of the corporate world.

Mangez Brioche; know there's a lotta love going into that dough and give a nod to poor Marie A!