To make a great sandwich, it's important to give as much consideration to the outside of the sandwich as it is the inside. By the outside, I mean the bread you use. The type of bread you choose for your sandwich will, of course, depend on what you're going to be putting between it. There are some combinations that should never see the light of day: grilled or fried bacon (and nothing else apart from a generous portion of butter and ketchup), for example, should never be placed between two slices of any sort of bread other than the cheap white stuff; whereas expensive, Italian bread, soft on the inside and slightly tough on the out, shouldn't, for example, be used with peanut butter. This has nothing to do with the price of the components of the sandwich, or their country of origin - it's just the way it is.

To make a great sandwich, choose suitable bread and make sure it's fresh. Even if it is the cheap white stuff, fresh is always best. Then decide what you're going to spread on it. Mayonnaise is always a good choice, although it's perhaps not the best one where your health is concerned. If you do decide to go for mayonnaise, keep it light (not the half-fat variety, but a light spreading on the bread). Remember that you don't have to spread anything on the bread if the sandwich filling is such that it contains enough of its own fat and needs no more (e.g. mashed avocado, tuna mayonnaise, peanut butter, or cream cheese). While mayonnaise works well with grilled chicken and turkey, butter is hard to beat for most sandwiches. Again, proper butter is preferable to the butter substitutes you can get nowadays (the ones that can be spread straight from the fridge and are only marginally better tasting than the containers they come in).

Once you've got your bread, and a suitable spread, then it's time to build your sandwich. It doesn't have to have 10 different ingredients; you can make a great sandwich from just bread and butter and salami, or bread and mustard and beef and lettuce. Furthermore, the more items you place in a sandwich, the longer it's going to take you to eat it and the greater the risk of losing a lot of what's in it. Keep it simple. If you use good quality ingredients then you don't need to load it up. In fact, a couple of slices of exceptional bread and a generous spread of cold, rich, creamy butter are sometimes all it takes to make a great sandwich.

Learn more about this author, Jed Eane.
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