Grilled Cheese on Herb Bread
holy shit that's fire!!!
Two slices of bread and some cheese, and it is still possible to do it badly. Almost everybody does: pan too hot, bread burnt, cheese still a cold brick in the middle.
Shave the cheese off the block, do not grate it. Wide thin shavings off a vegetable peeler lie flat against each other and melt as one sheet. Grated cheese is a pile of threads with air between them and it melts unevenly and leaks.
And cook it on medium-low for eight minutes, not high for three. The whole job is getting the inside molten before the outside is black, and there is no shortcut.
- Makes
- 2
- Hands-on
- 10 minutes
- In the pan
- 8 minutes
- Heat
- Medium-low, throughout
What you need
The sandwich
- 4 thick slices herb bread — rosemary, thyme and black pepper in the dough
- 8 oz sharp orange cheddar, shaved off the block with a peeler
- 3 tbsp soft butter, for the outsides
- 1 tsp mayonnaise per slice, optional and surprisingly good
The herb bread, if you are making it
- 4 cups bread flour
- 1 1/2 cups warm water
- 2 tsp instant yeast
- 2 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp chopped rosemary and thyme (from my garden)
- 1 tsp coarse black pepper
- 2 tbsp olive oil
How it goes
1 — Shave the cheese, do not grate it
A vegetable peeler down the face of a cold block gives you wide flat shavings. Stack them flat. This is the single biggest thing between a good grilled cheese and a leaky one.
2 — Butter the outsides, right to the corners
Soft butter spread edge to edge on the outside faces. Any dry patch is a pale patch, and the picture has no pale patches.
3 — A thin smear of mayonnaise helps
Over the butter, on the outside. The egg and oil in it brown faster and more evenly than butter alone. Nobody will taste mayonnaise.
pro tip — If that sounds wrong, do one of each and compare. It is the test that converts people.
4 — Cold pan, medium-low heat, lid on
Sandwich into a cold pan, heat turned to medium-low, lid over the top. The lid traps heat above the sandwich so the cheese melts while the bottom browns.
5 — Four minutes a side, pressed once
Four minutes, lift a corner and look — you want dark golden with darker patches. Flip, press down once with a spatula, four more minutes.
6 — Rest it two minutes before you cut it
Straight out of the pan the cheese is liquid and it runs out of the cut. Two minutes and it holds, which is why the picture shows a clean edge.
Holy shit, that's fire. LFG. LFG.