BLT with a twist

The BLT.  Two years ago, we made a variation of a BLT every Sunday for football.  We had DirecTV, we had six or more games going at once, and we had bacon. We love football, and we love bacon.  It's the perfect pair! 


We used to buy a loaf of the warmest french bread we could find in the grocery's bakery, but now that Nikola isn't supposed to have soy (and nearly every loaf of bread uses soybean oil and/or soy flour), we have been making our own bread.  Thank goodness for bread machines!  With french bread, you don't cook it in the machine, you just mix and let it do it's first rise in there.  I make the bread two ways, depending on what the need is.  For pasta meals, where you want to dip that amazing soft bread into sauce, I make it so the loaf is tall and narrow by twisting it up tight before it does its second rise.  For BLTs, it's all about wide and crusty.  How is that for descriptive?  It's important to me to have a good crust when you have a BLT so the bread can contain the amazing goodies inside. 

You'll be surprised by this next admission:  there is a recipe for the bread!  An honest to goodness, real recipe.  I've adapted the recipe from my bread machine's magic book to suit our needs.

1 1/3 C water
3 C bread flour
1/2 t sugar (I use honey)
1/2 t salt
2 t yeast (I use instant dry yeast, active dry yeast will work as well)

Add all to the bread machine, in that order.  Hit start.  DONE.  If you don't have a bread maker, just add all to a bowl or your stand mixer, making sure that the yeast doesn't touch the water until you start mixing.   Mix for about 5 minutes, then leave alone to rise for about 30 minutes.  If you're using the breadmaker, follow the instructions for your machine.  Mine has two beeps, which indicates it's prepped and ready to bake, so that's when I remove it.  Once you've removed it, roll or pat the dough into a 12 x 16-inch rectangle.  Starting with the long side, roll it up tightly, then pinch edges and ends to seal.  Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, or about 1 hour.  Now, when I'm making this bread specifically for BLTs, I flatten it out a bit before letting it rise, so it's got a larger surface area.  The sandwiches will be better if you do this, not so heavy on the bread.  Once you've let it rise, preheat your oven to 425, then bake for 25 - 30 minutes.  It'll be hard to resist eating it when you pull it out, it's so crispy and crusty and it smells divine.  If someone made a bread scented perfume, I would probably wear it!  (PS - sorry about the photos, all were taken on my phone.  I'm still getting used to the idea of documenting each step, and usually forget my camera until I've already gotten into the thick of the cooking.)

Now let's get to making the BLT.  I know that's what you're waiting for! 

You don't need a recipe for a BLT, right?  Right.  But this one has some twists that make it just that much better.  First things first, get to cooking up that bacon.  I baked mine for about 20 mintues at 350 to get it extra crispy.  Then, I used the melted bacon fat to cook up my twist: fried green tomatoes.  Oh, yes, you heard me right.  Fried.  Green.  Tomatoes.  So for all of you who had an abundance of tomatoes in your garden that never ripened, you now have something to do with them!

To make fried green tomatoes, you want to slice them thin and soak them in buttermilk for the entire time that the bacon is cooking.  If, like me, you can't use buttermilk, just add some vinegar to coconut milk and you'll get a similar result.

Once your bacon is crispy, pour the fat into a saute pan and get it heating up.  You're gonna fry some amazing tomatoes in it!

For the tomatoes, I put some masa and cornmeal on the plate.  You could use just plain all-purpose flour if you don't have masa, it won't ruin your tomatoes.  One at a time, pull your tomatoes out of the buttermilk soak, coat them in the cornmeal mixture, and drop them in that bacon fat.  Listen to them sizzle.  Fry them until they are nicely browned on each side, about 3 to 4 minutes.  Try not to pull one directly out of the pan and shove it in your face, it will burn you.  I may or may not be speaking from experience.

While your tomatoes and bacon cool just a bit, it's time to make the sauce.  Sure, you could use plain mayonnaise and it would be good.  Or you could take it to the next level and add hot sauce to it.  I added Fletcher's Hot Sauce to mine, because Fletcher's is simply the BEST.  It's local to me, and you just can't get better hot sauce in this town.  You could use Sriracha or Sambal Oelek, if you wanted to throw a different spin on it.  Or go with Tabasco for a tangy kick.  You're only limited by the assortment of hot sauce in your fridge.   (If you're me, that's an entire shelf in your fridge.)

Let's talk about the mayo for a second, ok?  People with egg allergies, or soy allergies, this mayo is for you!  Just Mayo, by Hampton Creek, tastes just like good real mayo (none of that weird flavor in most of the "veganaise" mayo), but they use yellow pea protein instead of eggs.   They sell it at Safeway and Target, it's in with the regular joe mayo, and is very similar in price.  It is non-GMO, cholesterol-free, egg-free, soy-free, dairy-free, lactose-free, kosher and gluten free.  That's a lot packed into one jar!  Give it a try if you like mayo, you won't regret it. 

Now it's time to assemble!  Slice that bread, spread that amazing hot sauce mayo.  Lettuce, bacon, fried green tomatoes...you're done!

  
I didn't take any photos of them finished because they disappeared too fast!  Trust me, they were amazing.  They would be perfect for football Sunday, or regular old Wednesday!   Enjoy.