Sometimes, when you write about sandwiches for a sandwich blog that has a focus on sharing homebaked bread recipes, you end up practicing a bread roll, loaf, or bun recipe a few times and have extras that you need to use in a different sandwich. That’s what happened this week. I was double-checking my new sesame seed hero roll recipe and needed to come up with an idea of a new sandwich to make that was different from last week’s sandwich. I’m trying not to bore my regular newsletter readers and subscribers, so I want to switch it up as much as possible, but in this case, the sandwich does look a little similar.
But it’s totally different! I promise!
What is this sandwich?
This is a sandwich that’s based on two pork-focused concepts. The first is roast pork slices topped with broiled and melted fresh mozzarella cheese. This alone would make for a pretty good sandwich, but then the second concept is added, which is a simple spinach and red onion salad with crispy bacon bits and a hot bacon dressing drizzled on top and tossed. Combine the pork and cheese with a tart and extra bacon-y pile of spinach salad, and you’ve got the makings and components for a really good sandwich.
But first, we need some bread.
Sesame hero rolls
As I insinuated a few paragraphs ago, this is a fairly new recipe for this sandwich blog that I shared last week. I have since baked it one more time for this blog post to make sure everything checked out. This is a riff on another sub sandwich roll recipe that I’ve shared before, so I probably didn’t need to test it as much as I did, but more bread means more sandwiches.
This is a great roll for a sub sandwich or hero in this case, and it is very similar to the roll that the sandwiches I recently ate at Defonte’s Sandwich Shop in Brooklyn, NYC. It’s chewy with a somewhat soft interior and a slightly crunchy exterior. The sesame seeds do get all over your house, so get ready for that, but otherwise, I could see this one getting on my favorite sub roll recipe list, and you will probably see me make it for another sandwich in the future.
This roll is just like other sub rolls that I’ve made for this blog in that you divide the dough into 3 pieces and then roll them to about the length that you require. At that point, you can bake them directly on a sheet pan, but for this batch, I tried to bake them in a silicone mold that I typically use for softer sub rolls. I knew this would compromise the bottom of the rolls and they wouldn’t end up quite as crusty, but it really does ensure that the rolls are much more consistent.
I have a love/hate relationship with sesame seeds. I think they definitely make a bread roll look more interesting, but when you bake with them, they go everywhere. Pull one out to slice, and your whole cutting board will be covered with seeds.
The reason that they get everywhere in this recipe is that the seeds aren’t adhered to the bread with anything. Typically, you’ll have an egg wash, which sort of glues the seeds on, but we just roll the dough in the seeds, and they will have a tendency to slip off.
Right before the dough goes in the oven, I spray them liberally with water, which will introduce steam into the oven during the beginning of the baking process. This should help the exterior crust be a bit crustier, which is important to this style of roll.
Here’s my sesame seed hero roll recipe, and you’ll have to bake it yourself to find out how good it is. Send me a photo!
Sesame seed hero rolls
This is a great roll for your next sub or cold cut sandwich. The addition of bread flour gives the rolls just a bit of chew, but the interior is still nice and soft, while the crust of the rolls stays slightly crunchy.
Get RecipeRoasted pork
The base of the protein for this sandwich and the first of the three pork additions was a large piece of roasted pork that I cooled and sliced fairly thinly.
I bought a 4+ pound bone-in loin end pork roast for $8.94 last week, seasoned it, and roasted it in my oven until it hit temperature. To accomplish the seasoning part of this process, I coated the exterior in a thin coating of Dijon mustard and then dusted everything with a simple Cajun-ish seasoning that I whipped up from various seasonings that you might already have in your pantry.
After the pork was appropriately seasoned, I shoved a temperature probe deep into the middle and baked it at 350 F (176 C) until the meat hit 145 F (63 C). You can allow the meat to cool for 30 minutes or so and then immediately start slicing it, but I find you get much better slices if you store the pork in the fridge, tightly wrapped in plastic wrap and/or foil and then slice it when the meat has chilled to refrigerator temp—or just the next day.
As you can see in the photos below, I used a fairly inexpensive deli meat slicer that I’ve owned for a few years now and use once a month or so. It takes up a lot of room, and this isn’t for everyone, so just know that you can slice this meat by hand without forking out the dough for an electric slicer. If you’re slicing by hand, just take your time and try to slice it fairly thin. Don’t stress about it, though, the meat should be tender if you cooked it to temperature.
Fresh mozzarella
You can make your own mozzarella from a gallon of fresh milk, or you can just buy some from the store. It’s up to you. I bought mine from the dairy section of the market and sliced it up for sandwiching. These slices are broiled to melt the cheese, and altogether, these will bring a ton of creamy texture to this pork hero.
Hot bacon dressing and spinach salad
I remember eating a lot of spinach salad with a hot bacon dressing during the 1980s when I was just an innocent child. I liked the salad, but I also did not like the salad. If you haven’t read this already, I do not like the texture of boiled eggs, and boiled and sliced egg was a pretty big component of this type of salad. I have memories of picking out the boiled egg pieces, and then the salad was pretty good! Bacon, good. Spinach, fine. A salty, bacon-focused vineagrette? All this is good; keep the egg out of mine.
The start of this salad requires baking or cooking some bacon and reserving the bacon fat or grease. I do this in the oven and then pour off the grease into a jar that I use to reserve bacon grease. The bacon is chopped and added to the spinach along with some sliced and chopped red onion. The grease you’ve saved is the third of the pork products added to this sandwich, and it’s the base of the hot dressing that you warm up and cook on the stove.
Once you have the bacon grease in a pan, you can add the minced garlic, red wine vinegar, sugar, and salt. Once everything is hot and melted, the dressing is pretty much ready to go.
I think when I was a kid, my mom made her spinach salad with large or adult spinach. Is adult spinach a thing? The internet says it is called mature spinach. I used baby spinach for this sandwich. It’s just easier to find, and at least where I live, you can buy baby spinach already portioned out in bags. That’s what I bought.
I don’t hate the stems on baby spinach but I really didn’t want them poking all around the place in this sandwich. I trim the long stems, and then I give the leaves a rough chop because I found that the salad will work better in a sandwich if the leaves are in slightly smaller pieces.
Sandwich build process
This is an easy sandwich to build once you have the components ready to go. You can build it however you want, but follow along with the photos below to see how I do it.
BROIL TO MELT CHEESE AND TOAST.
Wrap it up
At this point, I should probably just write a “wrap it up” section and repost it for every sub sandwich that I write about. If you’re a weekly reader, you’re probably getting tired of reading about it, but I think it’s pretty important.
Wrapping that sandwich up in some parchment or foil makes the sandwich easier to eat and helps an extra tall sub sandwich to tighten up and helps the internal sandwich components to mingle and become friendly with each other. Any dressings or juices will soak into the bread and, in general, just make the sandwich better.
Wrap your sandwiches, and you can thank me for writing this section every week when you have a fantastically cohesive sandwich experience.
The triple pork and spinach sandwich photos and recipe
Here are some photos of the sandwiches I made during the process of writing about this porky sandwich. The full recipe is just down below, so enjoy scrolling through some pretty sandwich photos.
Triple pork and spinach hero sandwich
Tender roast pork, topped with creamy fresh mozzarella, is the counterpart to a spinach and bacon salad tossed in a hot bacon dressing in this pork and greens hero.
Ingredients:
Roast pork- 1 tablespoon salt
- 1 tablespoon black pepper
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1⁄2 teaspoon celery salt
- 1⁄2 teaspoon cayenne pepper powder
- 4 to 6 pound pork roast or shoulder
- 3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
- 3⁄4 to 1 pound bacon
- 2 tablespoons bacon grease (reserved from cooking the bacon)
- 1 clove garlic minced
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
- pinch of salt
- small handful of baby spinach (stems removed)
- red onion, sliced and cut into small pieces
- 1 to 2 pieces of chopped bacon (cooked earlier)
- 1 six to eight inch bread roll, sliced
- mayonnaise and/or mustard
- slices of roast pork (from above)
- 2 to 3 slices of fresh mozzarella
- spinach salad with hot bacon dressing (from above)
Directions:
Dry rub: in a small bowl, combine salt, black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, celery salt, and cayenne pepper powder. This is the dry rub for the roast pork.
Roast pork: preheat your oven to 350 F (175 C).
Cover the pork with a thin layer of Dijon mustard and then liberally sprinkle on the dry rub seasoning. I do this one side at a time. But make sure all sides of the pork are covered in mustard and dry rub.
If you have a probe thermometer, insert it at the deepest part of the pork and bake until the internal temperature hits 145 F (63 C). This took me just under 2 hours.
Allow the pork to rest for 1 hour, and then wrap it in plastic wrap and/or foil and place it in the fridge overnight. The next morning, slice the pork roast in thin slices and store the slices in the fridge until it is time to sandwich.
Bake bacon: line a sheet pan with aluminum foil. I typically overlap two or three pieces.
Remove the bacon from the package and lay as many slices as you can on the foil-lined baking sheet. You can place your bacon very close together, but try not to overlap the pieces. If you can't get the whole package on there, put the remainder back in the fridge for later.
Do not preheat your oven. When you have as much bacon as you can fit on your sheet pan, place it in a cold oven and set it to 400 degrees F (204 C).
Set a timer for 20 minutes and start checking the bacon. Depending on the type of bacon and thickness, it could take another 5 or more minutes.
I start checking at 20 minutes, and if it's not fully done, I will flip the bacon and put it back in the oven for another 5 minutes or so, checking the doneness every so often. Once the bacon is done to your liking, remove the slices to a paper towel-lined plate and store them in the fridge if you're not using them immediately.
Reserve the bacon grease: carefully pour the liquid grease in the pan into a jar and allow to cool on the counter. This will be used in the hot bacon dressing.
Hot bacon dressing: in a small skillet over medium heat, add 2 tablespoons of the bacon grease. Once the grease has fully melted, add 1 clove of minced or pressed garlic. Saute for 1 minute, and then add the sugar, salt, and red wine vinegar. Cook the dressing for another 2 to 3 minutes or until everything is nice and hot, and remove the pan from the heat.
Salad assembly: if your pieces of baby spinach seem large, you can chop them. This will help the salad to be in slightly smaller pieces on the sandwich. Add the spinach to a bowl with sliced and chopped red onion and chopped bacon pieces.
Top the salad with some of the hot bacon dressing and toss.
Sandwich assembly: slice your bread roll and add mayonnaise and/or mustard to the bottom of the roll. Top that with several slices of the roast pork and 2 to 3 slices of fresh mozzarella. Place both the bottom of the sandwich roll (covered with meat and cheese) and the top of the roll under the broiler for 4 to 5 minutes to toast the top roll and melt the mozzarella. If you do not have a broiler, you can preheat your oven to 350 F (175 C) and bake the sandwich pieces for 5 to 7 minutes or until the mozzarella is melty.
Once the cheese is melty and the top of the roll is toasty, add the spinach salad on top of the mozzarella and close up the top of the roll to complete the sandwich. Wrap the sandwich in paper or foil to make serving a bit easier, and compress the sandwich ingredients just a bit more. Serve and enjoy.
Check back next week
Next week, we’ll be waffling. And sandwiching. Tell your friends. Get prepared.
