One of my favorite soapboxes on The Food Show is that nothing is how we understand it to be anymore. For a few years now I have been echoing a complaint from ML that Creole tomatoes stopped being good a long time ago. They were tasty recently enough for her to notice a difference, but today’s Creole tomatoes bear little resemblance to the juicy deep red homely fruits that my mom sliced to put between two pieces of Bunny Bread, sealing it with a layer of Blue Plate Mayo.
The Creole tomato sandwich is back, now on menus around town, but these are “gourmetized” versions. That’s another one of my soapboxes: that there are things that should never be “gourmetized,” like meatballs and spaghetti. I mean, please. Creole tomato sandwiches would belong in this group. My frustration with this caused me to make one myself, not that I would “gourmetize” it better, but I wanted a healthier version of the white bread.
It took me weeks to get around to making the basic white sandwich bread from Martha Stewart’s recipes online. (Click here.) This was a dense bread, unlike the soft bread Bunny makes. I told myself mine was healthier though it was made with commercial flour. I had already wasted an entire bag of expensive Bellegarde “pure” flour on my first batch. Who am I kidding? Bellegarde bread would never make anything remotely like white Bunny bread. Bellegarde flour is real and it is dense.
Even the white sandwich bread I made from Martha’s recipe using commercial white flour was stiffer than I expected. It required me to toast it for my sandwiches. I also made some buns with this dough, and they were a far cry from Bunny buns. I confess to thinking there is little better than a simple Bunny bun hot dog, but I made buns as part of my bread baking experiment. These too were “stiffer.” Disturbingly stiff. They will wrap around a hot dog this holiday.
In the meantime I got some tomatoes ML had picked at a farm called Charlie's U-Pic in Wiggins, MS. These were just like the Creole tomatoes of old.They were deep red and oozed juices when sliced. I couldn’t wait to construct the modified version of the sublime tomato sandwich of my youth.
I sliced two pieces of the stiff loaf and they went into the toaster.They were so dense I had to toast them twice. I had to let them cool before layering on the mayo. I stacked a few extra slices of tomato to offset the dense bread. And extra mayo.
While this sandwich was bookended by toasted bread rather than soft, all the other wonderful elements were there. The juices of the tomato dripped into the bread, softening it, and the mayo combined with the tomato juices made almost a salad dressing. It has been many years since the original Creole tomato sandwiches made such an impression on me. This modern-day toasted version was just as pleasing, so many years hence.
