Weekend Sandwiches, According to Girl

Weekend sandwiches according to Girl: One of my favorite lines in one of the classic movies of all time (The Blues Brothers), Jake and Elwood sing the "Wish Sandwich" lyric: "Bow bow bow… Um, do that again… Bow bow bow… Have you ever heard of a wish sandwich? A wish sandwich is the kind of a sandwich where you have two slices of bread and you, hee hee hee, wish you had some meat…" (Rubber Biscuit, by Adam R. Levy and Father Enterprises).


On East Sixth Street, we had a small, but adequate oven, and on the weekends we discovered that I could bake bread.

I pulled out the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, studied the procedures. I picked up some loaf pans, ingredients and I began to bake. This was unfamiliar territory for me. I felt like a four-year-old playing T-ball for the first time. "Let’s see, which way do I run when I hit the ball? And, what do I do with the bat? Do I carry it back to the dugout? Then, when I’m in the outfield, where do I throw the ball if it comes to me?"

Thankfully, no one was in my kitchen with a video camera the first time I baked bread.

I began the task of buying those necessary ingredients—flour, sugar, milk, butter, and most important of all, yeast. Now, this yeast is weird stuff. It has a date on the package that if not used in three weeks or so, it will expire. What could this mean? Do all the little tan granules just pass away? Or breathe their last gasp of stinky air? Yup, that yeast is very interesting.

Well, here goes—I put all my ingredients in the cart, proceeded to the checkout, and was soon on my way home.

I read in my book that the first step was to dissolve the yeast. Now, this could be interesting. "Why," I wondered, "did the water have to be the perfect temperature?" I decided to carefully follow all the directions.

I added the sugar and butter, and then opened the package of yeast. As I did, I thought I should take a whiff of the yeast if I’m going to put it in my bread. That was a mistake. My advice is to never smell the yeast—it smells ghastly, like something dead. The smelling of the yeast was my biggest blunder of the whole project. I knew that Mike would be coming home from school soon; so I made myself get a grip, and forge on. I was not only learning the baking terminology, I was learning to apply it. I was letting my dough rise as the recipe required. I was kneading and punching down—great fun, like a clay project in art class.

I pretended I was making bread alligators, bread bunnies and bread snowmen. I was really getting into this. I had flour all over my clothes and in my hair, with lots of sticky dough pasted to my fingers. I was glad the dogs were willing to eat the bits and pieces that landed on the floor. "It must taste pretty good already," I thought. "the dogs are lovin’ it."

Then, just as directed, I covered my creation with a towel.

I couldn’t control my curiosity. I peeked under the towel often, trying to catch a glimpse of the magical raising of the softball-sized dough.

I was amazed when the small ball of dough grew to the size of a basketball. Right at the appropriate time, I split the ball of dough into three pans and slid them into the oven to finish the job.

Mike walked in the door about ten minutes before the bread was done. He said that when he was halfway up the block, the heavenly smell of a bakery hit his senses. As he came closer, through the double doors, up the steps, it was stronger. Then, bursting through the police lock and deadbolts, and into the apartment, he was in total amazement. I was still covered with a bit of flour, but he grabbed me for a messy kiss and opened the oven. We impatiently waited a few more minutes, found some potholders, and finally pulled out the hot bread. Smothering the warm slices with butter, we ate half a loaf. It was fabulous.

We learned to love ham sandwiches, turkey sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, everything else we found in the refrigerator small enough to fit on a piece of warm, sweet bread. I’ve heard that even the "wish" sandwiches were better with hot bread.