I had ambitious plans to make sandwiches for lunch on Sunday. Sandwiches – ambitious? Yes, if they’re made to order from Margaux Sky’s cookbook, ….. This is a beautiful cookbook, with yummy-sounding breads and fillings and gorgeous photos. And I have a sandwich fetish, so it suits me well.
Recipes from this cookbook are ambitious. Directions are somewhat vague, so it’s definitely not a book for beginners. I found myself guessing a lot.
The first step for the sandwiches was the bread. Salsa bread! It uses a white bread dough, with a homemade fresh salsa and pepper jack cheese rolled up inside. The recipe for the white bread dough calls for 16 CUPS of flour – it makes four loaves. The first thing I decided was to cut the recipe in half. Although I proofed my yeast prior to starting, I still worried that my yeast was dead when it didn’t fizz in the mixture of warm milk and half-and-half. I fretted for a while, consulted some food science books, decided my liquids weren’t warm enough and continued on.
Once I added the liquids to the flour mixure, the dough was a wet, goopy mess. Ick. Maybe a result of cutting the recipe in half, or because of interpretation – I always weigh my flour, instead of measuring. I use King Arthur Unbleached AP flour, at 4.25 oz. per cup. I kept adding flour, 2 oz. at a time, until the dough looked right – in total, I added another 8 oz. of flour. I wish all recipes called out flour by weight.
My first rising went fine, it got huge and I punched it down and cut it in half. Half went into the refrigerator for another use (hmm, spicy pepper jack bread?), and I used the other half for the salsa bread.

After rolling the dough up with the salsa (which is delicious, by the way) and the pepper jack cheese, it got another rising and was overflowing the loaf pan. My yeast had gone crazy. No matter, I baked it anyway, and it smelled and looked wonderful. After letting it cool, I cut a slice and tried it – yum! It’s going to be great with our sandwiches. It’s very heavy – probably that two cups of cheese and two cups of salsa. It’s perfectly cooked, although I have an air bubble in the top. I thought it was odd that the recipe didn’t say to slash the loaf. I almost did – but then decided to just follow directions and see how it turned out.
This is not an undertaking for the faint of heart.

• Salsa Bread (Beautiful Breads and Fabulous Fillings: The Best Sandwiches in America, p. 16)