Between the Buns

I have been thinking about sandwiches for a few days. Not fancy sandwiches with names longer than the menu they're printed on. Just sandwiches. Two pieces of carbohydrate that somehow manage to hold together an entire meal. Bread on the outside. Everything else somewhere in the middle. Protein. Vegetables. Cheese. Eggs. More carbohydrates if someone got particularly ambitious and decided that potatoes also belonged in a sandwich. (Whoever invented the vada pav deserves a Michelin stars or multiple chefs hats or maybe a Nobel Prize or counselling.)

I love sandwiches. They are probably one of humanity's greatest engineering achievements. They are portable, scalable and infinitely customisable. You can eat one standing up, sitting down, driving—although you  shouldn't—or while pretending to pay attention during a Teams meeting. They work equally well for breakfast, lunch, dinner and those mysterious moments around 4 p.m. when your stomach suddenly decides it has been neglected. The sandwich doesn't judge.

It probably won’t matter if you believe to creation or evolution, there is one observation that is difficult to ignore. Look at our teeth. Look at our digestive system. We aren't specialists. A tiger doesn't spend much time wondering which leafy greens would pair well with today's antelope. A cow isn't eyeing a passing rabbit thinking, "Perhaps just one bite." We, on the other hand, appear to have evolved or been designed, depending on your perspective; with an astonishing willingness to experiment. Which makes me think about the poor ancestor who performed quality assurance for the rest of the tribe. Someone had to discover that certain berries were edible. Someone had to discover that mushrooms came in two varieties: dinner and obituary. They probably looked at a strange root, shrugged, took a bite and accidentally became a cautionary tale. Human knowledge is built on an uncomfortable number of people who found out the hard way.

"Don't eat the red ones."

"Why?"

"...Trust me."

That sentence probably has a fascinating history. Which brings me back to bread. Bread has always amazed me because it is so unnecessarily complicated. (Try making it from scratch and you will know exactly what I mean. Last few days we - as in Simonne more than the rest of us who promised, has been making a SourDough Bread). Imagine you've never seen bread before. You notice a field of grain. Instead of simply eating the grain, you decide to harvest it, dry it, separate it, grind it into an incredibly fine powder using stones, mix that powder with water until it becomes a sticky lump, knead it repeatedly for reasons that are not immediately obvious, wait for chemistry to happen, and then place it into a very hot oven. You would have probably been burnt at the stake as a witch or a wizard. Who looked at a handful of wheat and thought, "I know exactly what this wants to become." That leap of imagination is extraordinary. As an engineer, I admire processes. Bread is entirely process. Every step seems pointless until all the steps come together. Grain becomes flour. Flour becomes dough. Dough becomes bread. Skip one step and you don't have lunch. You have disappointment. And then there's fermentation. Beer for sure  came before bread. That somehow makes complete sense to me. Leave grains sitting around with water for long enough and nature happily recruits wild yeast to begin making alcohol. You don't need to understand microbiology to discover beer. You merely need patience and perhaps a willingness to drink something that smells suspicious.

Bread, however, asks for discipline. Control the moisture. Control the ingredients. Control the temperature. Control the timing. Beer is a happy accident. Bread is a manufacturing process. It fascinates me that thousands of years before anyone understood yeast, proteins or gluten, people were consistently producing loaves of bread. Imagine inventing something whose chemistry you couldn't possibly explain. Wow. 

Then comes the filling. This is where the sandwich becomes an expression of personality. Some people like neat layers. Others build architectural marvels that require structural calculations before the first bite. Protein, vegetables, cheese, sauces, herbs, spices—raw, grilled, roasted, smoked or fried. Every ingredient has its own science. Cooking meat changes proteins. Grilling vegetables caramelises sugars. Pickling introduces acidity. Cheese melts because of fat and protein interactions. Even lettuce contributes texture more than flavour. The humble sandwich is actually a chemistry experiment disguised as lunch.

Think about toast. The difference between bread and toast is simply heat. Yet the flavour changes completely because sugars and amino acids dance together in what scientists call the Maillard reaction.  Most of us react -  "That smells amazing." Or for some unfortunate soul “That smells burnt” Heat has to be controlled. Butter melts into tiny pores (There is a cafe in Pune- they mastered this maybe a 100 years ago and still do toast butter to perfection every time). Tomatoes release juice. Mustard wakes everything else up. Every bite becomes a balancing act between texture, temperature and flavour. It's edible systems engineering.

Perhaps that's why sandwiches appeal to me. I enjoy making things. Sometimes it's a piece of furniture. Sometimes it's a small Python script that automates a tedious task. Sometimes it's soldering together a circuit that stubbornly refuses to work until the third attempt. A sandwich scratches exactly the same itch. I begin with components, understanding what each one contributes. And then assemble them in a particular order that I like.

I don’t optimise for structural integrity because I like them a bit sloppy but then there are times that I might want to ensure I am not chasing tomatoes that have escaped from the side. Then comes testing. The first bite. Engineers call it validation. Everyone else calls it lunch. There is also something wonderfully democratic about sandwiches, they exist everywhere. Different breads. Different fillings. Different sauces. Different names. The concept remains unchanged. Wrap edible things inside carbohydrates.

Eat. Smile. Repeat.

Unfortunately, carbohydrates and I now have a more complicated relationship than we once did. When I was younger, bread was simply delicious. Now every slice is determined to negotiate directly with my waistline. Apparently metabolism reaches an age where it  keeps receipts. So yes, bread has become something of a guilty pleasure. The very thing that makes sandwiches wonderful is also the thing that makes my weighing scale sigh every weekend. And yet, every so often, I make one or ask Meghna to make one anyway. We call them “sammich”. They are toasted , slightly sloppy and both of us love eating them. 

Why “sammich” ?  Because they are not just food, its a lot of imagination, its chemistry, its engineering, its biology and over a thousand years of trial, error, accidental discoveries and probably a surprising number of unfortunate ancestors who bravely ate something first so that the rest of us didn't have to.

All between the buns.

C