Sandwich

Freeze the loaf, build on frozen slices and seal the bread with fat. The method that gets a gluten free sandwich to lunch in one piece.

Makes

2 lunches

Hands on

10 min

Start to finish

10 min

Keeps

Built the night before and eaten at lunch. It does not hold two days.

• 4 slicesgluten free sandwich bread, from the freezerFreeze the loaf the day you open it. Gluten free bread stales in about a day on the counter and it does not come back.
• 2 tablespoonsbutter, mayonnaise or cream cheeseStructural, not a flavor choice. This is the waterproof layer.
• 2large lettuce leaves, driedRomaine or butter lettuce. A leaf between wet filling and bread buys about four hours.
• 4 slicesdeli turkey or hamThe ingredient most worth reading here. Sliced meat is often injected with a broth or starch solution, and some carry a wheat containing seasoning.
• 2 slicescheese
• salt and pepper

1. Take two slices out of the freezer and build directly on them. Frozen slices are firm, they do not tear under a knife, and they thaw by mid morning inside a lunch bag.
2. Spread butter, mayonnaise or cream cheese edge to edge on the facing side of both slices, corners included. That fat layer is what keeps tomato juice and dressing out of the crumb.
3. Lay a dried lettuce leaf, or a slice of cheese, against the bread on the wet side.
4. Keep the wet part of the filling in the middle, away from the edges, where it cannot run out and wick into the crust.
5. Cut once with a serrated knife, pressing straight down rather than sawing. Every extra cut is another edge that crumbles, so halves travel better than quarters.
6. Wrap it tight in wax paper or plastic so the two halves are held together, then set the wrapped sandwich in a hard container.
7. Pack it untoasted. Heat brings gluten free bread back for about ten minutes, and a toasted sandwich turns leathery once it goes cold.

1. A hard sided container or bento, not a soft bag. Gluten free bread has nothing holding it together and it will not survive a water bottle sitting on it.
2. The sandwich goes in last, on top, with nothing heavy over it.
3. The ice pack goes against the fruit or the drink, on the far side of the box. Against the bread it keeps the sandwich frozen until noon.
4. Wet fillings travel deconstructed for a kid old enough to build it: buttered bread in the wrap, egg salad or chickpea salad in a cup with a spoon.
5. Slice bagels before they go into the freezer. A frozen whole bagel cannot be cut at 7am and cannot be split by hand at school.

• The bread cracked along the fold when they picked it up. It was built on room temperature bread that had already dried out. Build on frozen slices.
• The bottom slice is gray and wet. There was no fat spread on the inside face, or it was spread across the middle and not out to the edges.
• It came home as a bag of crumbs. It was cut into quarters or shapes and packed loose. Cut it once and wrap it tight.
• It is still frozen solid at lunch. The ice pack sat against the sandwich all morning. Move it to the other side of the box.

The loaf is labeled, so on a sandwich the risk moves to everything the bread touches. A shared toaster is the largest one in a mixed kitchen, since crumbs stay in the elements and the crumb tray, so keep a second toaster or use toaster bags. The same logic covers a shared butter tub, jelly jar and nut butter jar, where one knife that went into regular bread first contaminates the whole jar, and squeeze bottles solve that outright. On the ingredients, deli meat is the one people skip: sliced turkey and ham are frequently injected with a broth or a starch solution, some carry a wheat containing seasoning rub, and a deli counter slicer runs everything in the case, so pre packaged sliced meat with a label on it is the more predictable route. Cheese and cream cheese have nothing to read.