The Best Bread To Use For Chicken, Tuna, And Egg Salad Sandwiches

Regardless of your fillings, the key to crafting a high quality sandwich often lies in selecting the best bread. But when you're using ingredients like creamy chicken salad, rich tuna fish, or luxuriously soft egg salad it can become tricky to choose the right type of slices that will support their weight and moisture content. To figure out exactly which bread is the top-notch choice for building the best sandwich with these salads, we turned to John Politte, the owner and executive chef of the YouTube channel It's Only Food w/ John Politte.

For these sandwiches, Politte says he always reaches for a heavier multigrain variety, citing the textural contrast between the salad's creaminess and the structure of the bread. But his reasoning extends beyond the enjoyment of the two together — the bread's structure has practical purposes, too. "You want the bread to hold the heavily composed salad in the sandwich without falling out or destroying the integrity of the bread and falling apart," he said.

Multigrain breads are characterized by the fact that they contain more than one type of grain that can include rye, oats, brown rice, wheat, spelt, quinoa, and corn. If you're looking for the best store-bought bread for your sandwich, seek out one that's clearly sturdy and is labeled as being 100% multigrain. You can also take a peek at the nutritional information to ensure that multigrains are foremost on the ingredient list to make sure you're getting the highest quality bread.

Once you've settled on the bread to use for your sandwich, how you craft it plays a big role in how well it stays together. According to John Politte, you want to be sure to keep an eye on how much you're spreading onto your slices. "Having the right balance of the filling-to-bread ratio is also important," he said. "Too much salad filling with the bread is messy, and not enough filling makes the sandwich look bare."

The right ratio for your sandwich is going to depend on the specific type of bread that you've chosen, but it's fair to say that if it's piled high, or already spilling down the sides of the bread, it's probably not going to stay intact when you bite into it. If you're leaning toward being cautious and using less salad, avoid a bare-looking sandwich by layering on lettuce, cheese, cucumbers, tomato or other similar toppings that will bulk it up. Plus, pat ingredients like greens dry before they're added to the sandwich to create a barrier between the salad and the bread, avoiding a soggy mess.

Finally, even if you already have hearty bread, you can boost your sandwich's sturdiness by toasting the slices. Not only does it provide even more texture, it will also improve the bread's ability to hold all of the fillings, making sure all that creamy goodness makes it to your mouth and not your lap.