The Foodist: The Way of the BLT

by Ari LeVaux

A properly put together BLT is the Bruce Lee of sandwiches. It’s lean and light and full of fight.

Just a few strips of bacon give you all the meat necessary for this black-belt combination of tomato, onion, mayo, bacon, bread and lettuce. By using finesse and precision instead of brute force, that elegant BLT can whoop a Reuben, a turkey Swiss, a roast beef — you name it — maybe all at once.

It is a masterpiece of a sandwich and a masterclass in all-around sandwich-ology, in part because pulling off a perfect BLT is not easy. The challenges inherent to a BLT pave the way for some of the most illuminating lessons in getting around the many pitfalls this sandwich presents.

For example, the watery combination of tomato and mayo threatens the integrity of the bread. This combination is non-negotiable. That the tomato must be in contact with the mayo is one of the few hard-fast rules of the BLT.  It’s the backbone of the flavor combination, more important than the bacon itself. In fact, it’s precisely for this reason that vegetarians and other non-bacon eaters can enjoy what I consider a true BLT experience. Just insert your favorite bacon substitute into the equation and Karate-chop that sucker in half — diagonal, corner to corner.

You won’t miss a step with your fake bacon, but kid you not:  if you don’t manage that tomato and mayo situation, your BLT will self-destruct in about 25 seconds.

The obvious thing to do is toast the bread, right? The resulting browned, crusted finish that develops on the slices can withstand the dual onslaught of tomato and mayo and keep itself together long enough to pack into a lunchbox.

But there is a downside to toasting the bread of a sandwich as delectable as this one. You can become so entranced by the flavor that you eat the sandwich so quickly that the sharp edges of the heat-hardened crust cut into your mouth behind your teeth, in a manner that is most unsatisfying.

It seems wrong that we must choose between bread that has reverted to dough phase from contact with the tomato and mayo and risking the roofs of our mouths on the jagged crust as we chomp, eyes rolled back into our heads like frenzied sharks.

The answer — one of the most brilliant culinary tricks ever — comes from a farmer friend. I use it on nearly every sandwich I make for myself, BLT and non-BLT. It goes like this.

Place two pieces of bread (pressed together as if in a sandwich) in a toaster oven or extra-wide toaster. Set toaster to medium.  When the bell dings, each piece of bread will have a toasted side and a not toasted side — the toasted sides being the two outer sides of the double slice of bread, with the non-toasted sides facing each other inward.

Now, prepare your BLT.

Lay the two slices of half-toasted bread on a plate or cutting board, with both toasted sides facing up. Mayo the toasted sides of both. Lay some sliced tomatoes on one mayo-lathered face and thin-sliced onions on the other.

Lay the bacon strips over the tomatoes and layer with lettuce. Place the onion and mayo piece atop of the lettuce, so that the toasted faces are now lathered with mayo and facing inward, while the soft, untoasted sides of each slice face outward.

When you first bite into a sandwich made with half-toasted bread, everything is soft. Your teeth will soon reach the mayo-lathered, toasted faces. Bite through and into the sandwich.

And that is the half-toasted bread technique.

Once you try it, you may never make a sandwich the same way again. Any time the contents of a sandwich are prohibitively damp, simply toast the inner faces and contain the jelly, tuna fish, egg salad or any moist materials, your bread will be better able to accommodate the contents. And that is what a sandwich is all about.