David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published July 27, 2004

A sandwich's success depends on your choice of bread

Carbohydrates, shmarbohydrates. I need some bread. After all, a good bread is pivotal to a sandwich's success. Despite having the finest meats, cheeses, veggies, spices and condiments the Western world has to offer, it can all be reduced to just another humdrum sandwich if you don't have the right bread keeping order.

Bread is the sandwich's enforcer. It ensures that everything inside stays where it should be. Without bread, our pastrami, Swiss, lettuce, tomato and mustard would be in total disarray, piled up in a chaotic mound. Without bread you'd need a fork. Boring! Without bread, you wouldn't be able to eat your pastrami, Swiss, lettuce, tomato and mustard while you're driving, chatting on the cell phone, changing CDs and handing sippy cups to the kids in the back seat. Oh sure, bread's existence probably results in increased car insurance premiums and a few extra traffic fatalities because people are more focused on their to-go order than the three-ton minivan stopped at the red light a few yards ahead, but those are the perils of living in a modern, bread-centric society.

I'll get to bread's tastes in a moment, but bread stability is just as important as flavor. Even the best-tasting sandwich bread in the world must still perform a basic structural function.

A bread that's too soft won't be able to maintain a minimum level of rigidity to ensure a carefree, enjoyable sandwich experience. We've all had sandwich bread so soft that it falls and flops when you pick it up, forcing us to attack the sandwiches at odd angles, our heads cocked to one side like a dog that heard an odd noise. Bread this soft also soaks up liquid too quickly, leaving us with pasty dough dripping with tomato juice, lettuce water and mustard. It's not what I want for lunch.

But bread can be too stiff and unyielding as well. Some breads are so rigid you can barely chew them. I don't know about you, but I almost always enjoy chewing my food. Yes, bread that stiff will keep the sandwich strong and under control, but the tradeoff is simply too high. It's Nazi bread. Ruling the sandwich under a steel boot may be effective in some regards, but it's not practical. Living under a sandwich bread's Third Reich isn't really living at all. It's merely a miserable existence.

Assuming you have the rigidity issues resolved, the next facet of knowledgeable bread selection is taste. Proper rigidity can ruin a good sandwich before you take the first bite, but let's be honest -- great taste is what we're really after when we select our sandwich bread.

My default bread is wheat. It has some flavor to it, but it's not so strong that it stands between you and your ham and cheese. A good everyday wheat bread should be able to make its presence known but without getting in the way. An overpowering wheat bread can negate the tastiness of the sandwich materials, and what's the point of paying $6.99 a pound for a quality ham if your tastebuds can't detect anything but the domineering 89-cents-a-loaf wheat bread?

A wheat bread that's too wimpy isn't good either. An everyday wheat bread should taste like, well, wheat bread. If you want bland, untie a loaf of boring white bread.

Now, I don't want to come off as a militant white bread hater. Nothing could be further from the truth. I embrace all races, religions, creeds and breads. In fact, there's a loaf of white bread in my cupboard this very moment. I use it for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Granted, that's all I use it for, but every bread has purpose.

At our house, white bread is for PB&Js. I think white bread reminds us adults of our childhood, a simpler time when a Mom-made peanut butter and jelly felt like, oh I don't know, home. Also, I think white bread is best for PB&J because it gives the Jif and Smuckers room to work their magic. It's unobtrusive yet accommodating. I've tried PB&J on prouder breads like rye or pumpernickel, but I always come back to white.

When I'm in the mood for a good sandwich, a serious sandwich, I turn to the fun breads. These are the breads that have character, distinction and variety. The combinations are too many too name, but I reach for sourdough, pita, rye, multi-grain, pumpernickel, bagel, French, Italian -- and those are just some of the breads I use for sandwiches. That doesn't even include the Atkins-blasting decadent breads like biscuits, cornbread, banana bread, zucchini bread, croissants, cinnamon bread and the like.

I welcome the carbs. It just means I have to put in a little extra time on the treadmill. A life without bread is not for me. The future of the sandwich is at stake.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.