And last month, that's what I did with the BLT. See, the co-op near where I live makes a crazy good BLT, but a) they almost never have it because it sells out like a motherfucker and 2) I got tired of paying $5.75 for a sandwich I could damn well make myself. After all, it's a five-goddamn-ingredient sandwich; how hard could it be to make?
Pretty hard, as it turns out. Well, not hard to make, but hard to make well. I studied sandwich theory on the interwebs and in textbooks, I drew diagrams, I measured my jaw's maximum capacity. Two pounds of bacon, three clamshells of greens, and multiple pounds of tomatoes later, I finally made a BLT I was proud of.
Am I claiming that this is the ultimate BLT, the one that generations of the future will laud and forevermore consume? Mighty Odin, no. Sandwiches are as varied in structure and preference as oral sex. I'm just letting you guys know what I came up with, and some little fun factoids I picked up along the way.
The Bread
So let's start with the bread. Fact is, there's a ridiculously large amount of permutations you can make on a sandwich simply by modulating the bread you're serving it on. Split baguettes, sliced boules, the good old fashioned pullman loaf, cut thick or thin, toasted or not. The possibilities are endless, and infinitely important. After all, this is the frame of the sandwich, the parenthetical by which the damn thing will be consumed. Bread is fucking important, people - you can make a shitty sandwich out of the finest bread, but you can't make a good sandwich out of shitty bread.
The aforementioned coop sandwich was finished with one crucial touch that I was determined to incorporate in the final product - the multigrain bread was clearly fried in bacon fat before assembly, producing a satisfying crunch and an extra dimension of bacony goodness in the end game. Of course, it also left my fingers a little greasy, but I was willing to pay that price. So I grabbed a couple of slices of my go-to sandwich bread, a big fat long loaf of sourdough, fried them on both sides in bacon fat, and assembled my first BLT. And on the first goddamn bite, half the fillings went flying out the backside of the sandwich onto my lap.
So something wasn't right, besides the fact that I probably should have been holding the bloody thing over a plate on the first bite. I took another bite, more slowly this time, to see if I could determine what was wrong. As my teeth met the crisp outer shell of the bread, I could immediately feel the problem - a bite is a compression cut; not-so-sharp teeth pressing down on a hard surface meant the force of the bite was distributed horizontally over the entire top slice of bread. So rather than having my teeth cleave through the sandwich, it was pressing down on the whole damn thing until I applied enough force to crack the bacon-fried exterior.
So if I wanted all my fillings to stay in place, I could just use toothpicks, no? Yeah, I could ride my bike with the training wheels still on and play Rock Band on Easy, too, but I'm a grown-ass man, goddamn it. The solution, as it turned out, was pretty simple: only fry the interior of the bread. That way, I could still achieve the crispy, Maillard-reactiony goodness of a griddled bread while leaving the exterior pillowy and soft. My lower teeth could find purchase while my upper incisors could slice cleanly through without causing lateral force redistribution. Plus, no greasy fingers afterwards! My jeans were overjoyed.
The Spread
Any good sandwich maker knows that a spread can make or break a sandwich. It adds flavor and mouthfeel while simultaneously providing a moisture barrier between the fillings and the bread. When it comes to BLTs, tradition states mayo, and with good reason - the fatty, slightly tangy spread is the perfect foil to the acidic tomato and the smoky bacon.
But it's more than just that. Spreads are adhesives, too, adhesives desperately needed to hold a sandwich together bite after delicious bite. It's the glue that sticks the first filling to the bread, the initial tread that binds a sandwich together. Now, if you're not a fan of mayo (which I'm a little odded out by - it's the world's most innocuous condiment, but I respect your opinions), you could reach for all kinds of things here - hummus or tapenade, for example - so long as you're comfortable stretching the BLT out of its comfort zone. You could also just spread something suitably waterproof, like solidified bacon grease or butter, but even by my standards, that's getting a little gross.
I also like mayo because its pale color makes it easy to see how much cracked black pepper I'm putting on the sandwich, since this is the layer in which I add my spices. And my only spice is just that - cracked black pepper. No, no salt. This is a bacon sandwich, people. Calm down.
The Lettuce
I'll admit, I'm not a fan of iceberg. It's flavorless and leaks moisture like damp sponge. Left in whole leaves, it's about as blatant a slip hazard as Astroglide on a kindergarten floor. No, for a proper sandwich green, I look for something drier, with small enough leaves to create textural friction so consequent fillings don't slide right the fuck off of it. Which is important, because the next ingredient is going to be slippery as fuck. Arugula, that ever-faithful peppery green, fit the bill just right. No, it's not technically a lettuce. Yes, if you have a problem with this, you can suck it.
The Tomato
Now, I happen to live in a region where I can actually acquire Jersey beefsteak tomatoes when they're in season, but unfortunately, they're really only available about two weeks out of the year, so I prefer to use plum tomatoes for the other fifty weeks. I advise you do the same; when they're properly ripe, they've got the right balance of sweetness and acidity to cut the baconosity of the sandwich. When it comes down to it, it's the tomato that provides half of the big flavors in this situation, so choose wisely.
You'd think that we could just slice these delicious fruits down and drop them in, yes? INCORRECT. Tomatoes have a notoriously tenacious cuticle surrounding it, leading to an incredibly high bite-and-slide risk. What's a bite-and-slide? Anyone who's eaten an onion ring can tell you - it's when you bite into something and the whole goddamn thing comes out as you pull away, ruining the filling ratio for the rest of the experience. Is no good. Is very sad.
Couldn't we just peel and seed the tomato to avoid any danger of this? Theoretically, yes, that's an option. But who the fuck concasses tomatoes to put in a sandwich? Besides which, we actually want the tomato's seeds and jelly, since that's where the acidity of a tomato actually lies.
Instead, just split the tomato in half (which you should be doing to get the white pith core out anyway, because really, the pith can go fuck itself) and cut down accordingly. The reason why I like plum tomatoes so much for sandwiching is that cutting them in half leads to perfectly bite-sized slices with the jelly evenly distributed across the sandwich. If you're using something bigger, consider quartering them before slicing them down, but exercise caution - pieces too small and you run the risk of edge fallout, which is clinically proven to cause indiscriminate swearing and bystander mockery.
The Bacon
Yes. The bacon.
When I first embarked on this journey, I bought myself a slab of thick-cut bacon, assuming that thick meaty slices of pork belly would be the way to go. But ironically, what I loved about thick-cut when I was just walking around my house in flannels eating chunks of it while playing video games proved detrimental in sandwichy format. Fried crisp, it was actually too hard, distractingly toothsome in the midst of my sandwich, especially only cut in half to accommodate the shape of my bread. Thinner, regular-cut slices proved to be the winner here, being easier to chomp straight through than thick-cut.
Now, I happen to like my bacon crispy, so cutting the slices in half proved to be sufficient so that I could create an even layer across the sandwich. If you prefer your bacon more on the floppy side, take a lesson from my speech on tomatoes and bite-and-slide and cut them into fourths.
So that's it, right? All ingredients accounted for.
AND YET.
When I slapped the top slice of bread onto the bacon and took a bite, I felt... dissatisfied. Even using 1/2" thick bread, the single-layered flavors I instituted to eliminate slip risk were there, just not flourishing with the freshness and robustness I craved. What was I to do?
I decided to palindrome it. Double up from the inside out, multiplying the innards to bring it home. But this presented a new problem - bacon on bacon. After all my careful work layering frictional substances on each other, I had a dry-dry situation at the very core of my sandwich.
Enter that glorious addition to BLTs country-wide, avocado. Rich with lipidy flavor, thick slices of avocado would provide a spread-like glue to the center line, holding fast at the very heart of the structure.
One more time for emphasis, and I finally built my perfect BLT. And there you have it, guys. Enjoy.
Recap - building from the bottom up in single layers:
Sliced bread griddled in bacon fat (suggested: sourdough or seeded Italian)
Mayonnaise spread on the crisp side
Cracked black pepper
Arugula
Halved and sliced plum tomato
Crisp regular-cut bacon, slices cut in half
Sliced very ripe avocado
More bacon
Tomato again
Arugula
The other slice of bread with mayo and black pepper
Press gently down on the sandwich to moosh the layers together in a cohesive unit. Cut in half.
Eat the fuck out of it.
