Single serving sandwich bread. Really. No, seriously.

Mr. Cooklocal here, and let me apologize right off the bat. There isn’t going to be a recipe here. This isn’t about the what, so much as the how.

One of the many, many cookbooks on our shelf is the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which is actually a review copy, so, there we go, ethic folks, getting that out of the way right off the bat.

While the title isn’t exactly correct, since it really takes a bit more time than that, the bread was good, no question, and the ideas were good and interesting.

But, being a diabetic, there’s a big problem. I can’t have a lot of bread.

Whether we made it ourselves, or we bought from one our many favorite bread makers, it would inevitably go bad. And who wants that?

But the Mrs. wanted bread. Wanted a way to have sandwiches for lunch. So there-in I hatched a plan.

I set about trying to figure out a way to take a lump of cold, cold dough and turn it into a single serving of sandwich bread.

A pan would be unlikely to work. Finding something small enough and that would remain square, or at least close enough so as not to waste too much bread.

It came to me… well, honestly, I have no idea how it came to me. It just seemed like the right way to do it.

Bake the bread in a large, metal cookie cutter.

I just blew. your. mind.

So, let me say it again: Bake the bread in a large. metal. cookie cutter.

Brilliant or what?

So, we tried our local Cookie store. Nothing there really called to us. So a quick Google search led us to this:

Slice of Bread Cookie Cutter

$12.95 seemed like a small amount to spend to see if this was going to work. If it works, great! If it didn’t, well, heck, we still get a cookie cutter out of it.

I bought the cookie cutter almost a year ago and, finally, finally, we got to try it out.

I was nervous. I was antsy. I was afraid it wouldn’t work, even despite the laissez-faire attitude I just mentioned.

We went in without a plan, unsure how much dough needed to go into the cookie cutter to get a full ‘loaf’.

Honestly, even now, we’re not entirely sure.

Place the cutter on a cookie sheet, or on a silipat on a cookie sheet. Grease the inside of the cutter and fill it about half-way deep with bread dough. Or maybe a little more. It will likely vary based on the dough recipe, how much it rises during baking. It may take a couple of tests to get it just right.

Let it sit for 20 minutes on the counter and then pop it into a 400F (EDIT: let’s make it 350F to start[1]) oven for 15-20 minutes.  If you over filled it, you’ll end up with extra bread. If you under filled it too much, you’ll end up with a snack while you try it again.

You’ll likely need to run a knife around the inside of the cookie cutter to help loosen the bread.

The dough recipe we talked about before is what we’re using so far, sprinkled with a little salt from Secret Stash Salts before cooking.

We haven’t been doing the whole steam bath yet, we might in the future, but this bread isn’t so much about a crust, this is about producing two, fresh slices of bread for a sandwich.

And that’s what this is all about. Baking bread in a cookie cutter.

And it’s so worth it.

Think about it. Every night, 15 or 20 minutes worth of cooking gets you two slices of bread. Big enough cookie sheet, and that’s a couple sandwiches.

But then, if you’re a normal person and eat a lot of bread, the need for two fresh slices of bread probably isn’t high on your list. But even then, you have to admit, this is a cool idea.

Hi. It’s the Mrs. now, and I just wanted to pop in and say that when we make bread dough from the lovely Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book, we never make a whole batch. A half a batch of their standard Boule dough will make about 6 sandwiches depending on thickness. Since I don’t eat sandwiches every day, this lasts me about 10 days, which is about the ideal amount of time to keep the dough in the fridge.

[1] Make sure you check the soldered seam after you cook, make sure the solder didn’t melt and leak to cause any problems. Don’t make two back to back using the same cookie cutter, give it time to cool. See this post for more info, but don’t let it scare you too much. We’re still doing it with great success.

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Tagged as: Bread, Easy, Quick