Sandwich maker, not a baker
Or "how not to make a Philly Cheesesteak."
According to science, it takes about 37 weeks of commitment to an activity before ruinous hubris sets in. This is one of those indisputable scientific facts akin to “there are no scientific facts that are indisputable.”
I know this factual timeline to be true because this week marks week 38 of our very silly sandwich voyage through the United States, and it is the week that I thought to myself, “I can do it all.”
It turns out I couldn’t.
Allow me to be like someone who pulled way too far into a parking space and back-up a bit.
A few weeks ago I was talking to my friend Alicia about the sandwiches that were in our immediate future and mentioned the Philly Cheesesteak. She told me that I had to get the bread absolutely right and that Amoroso’s Bakery is the bread used in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, there’s not an Uber Eats driver in the entire country who could make that delivery happen for us. “But,” I thought, “we have the next best thing to Amoroso’s: ME.”
So I did a little clickity-clacking on the ol’ googling machine and found myself a recipe. I looked it over twice like Santa checking out his naughty list and felt that my baking chops were more than up to the task of making the bread. After all, I’ve very successfully made yeast bread tons of times before. This was going to be no problem.
On Sunday afternoon, I pulled out my KitchenAid mixer and got to work, careful to get the water temperature just right to activate (and not kill) the yeast, kneading it as described for as long as was instructed, cautiously ensuring I wasn’t using too much flour at any point, creating a nice little warm-but-not-too-warm pocket for the dough in my oven to let it proof. I was so diligent. I could hear Paul Hollywood telling me my bread was fantastic and was prepping myself for his handshake (which I would then be terribly humble about because that is what one does when one is on The Great British Baking Show.)
At every stage, things seemed to be going well. The bread was sticky, but not too sticky. It rose beautifully in the oven for the first rise. The rolls did their doubling quite nicely on the second rise. But as the oven pre-heated for the final bake, I noticed the dough seemed a bit….sad? It didn’t have the confident puffy spring in it that I’ve seen in past bread creations I’ve made. But this is a new recipe, I told myself. Everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
Everything.
Is.
Fine.
But seventeen minutes later I found out that everything was not fine. The bread looked less like bread and more like wrinkly old skin flaps. I mean, just look:
These clearly were not going to work as sandwich vessels.
To be fair, they tasted excellent and, had they not died an over-proofed (I think?) death they would have been fantastic. Alas, this was not the case, and I am this week’s weakest baker and have been asked to leave the tent.
So an emergency trip to the store later and we had take-and-bake French bread to fill the Amorosa roll-sized hole in my heart.
The disaster remains, but a crisis was averted.
Fortunately, it turns out that, unlike homemade bread, a great made-at-home Philly Cheesesteak is relatively quick and easy to make. So while my baking ego is forever bruised, our tastebuds and stomachs didn’t suffer one iota from this failure.
For the sandwiches, I fried sliced onions in a little vegetable oil in the cast iron skillet, careful to get them soft, but not caramelized. I then took those out of the pan and added very thinly sliced ribeye steaks that were tossed with generous amounts of salt and pepper to the pan. I cooked those until the pink was nearly gone, then added the onions back in. I let the meat and onions mingle together for a minute before piling the mixture high on the french bread and topped it with a slice of provolone.
All told it took about ten minutes of cooking. And while I can’t possibly compare this Philly Cheesesteak to an authentic made-in-Philly Philly Cheesesteak since I’ve never had the latter, I’d like to think that if we were entertaining friends from Philly and served these they’d take a bite and say, “not bad.” Because in my mind (and my mouth) it was fantastic.
The entire sandwich had very few ingredients: steak, onions, salt, pepper, provolone cheese, and bread. That’s it. I think the three keys to this sandwich’s particular umami-like deliciousness were 1) starting with quality steak, 2) not skimping on the salt, and 3) not using the garbage bread I made and pivoting to store-purchased bread, even if it wasn’t the 100% authentic real deal.
As Kenny Rogers said, you have to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, and know when to run to the store to get a better ingredient because you gone done screwed up.
Will next week’s sandwich be an almost disaster too? Only one way to find out.
When we’ve eaten our way through this list twelve weeks from now, what sandwich should I make next?