Grilled Ham and Cheese Sandwich

Our cooking style at our vacation home is a simpler version of that at our main residence.  There are a few reasons for this.  First we do not have some of the kitchen equipment there that we are used to using at home.  We are slowly getting there but still haven't bought a KitchenAid stand mixer, percolator, panini press, higher quality knives so basically the higher end equipment we are used to using.  Part of this is due to needing certain equipment for our short term tenants while needing storage for items we don't want them to use.  A second problem is cooking there (central Florida) has to be adjusted somewhat to keep heat out of the house, reducing the strain on the air conditioning.  The final problem is the duration of our stays so we want to minimize leftovers that can't be brought back or stored.

We eat a lot of homemade breads.  I don't have either a stand mixer or breadmachine at the vacation home so have not made bread there yet.  We have discovered that both Wal-mart and Publix have nice, fresh bread selections from their in store bakeries.  The breads are more expensive than homemade but for now it means I don't have to worry about how to store the raw ingredients when the house is rented out.

We bought a loaf of Asiago bread.  Note the beautiful air pockets in the bread.  They are formed from the gluten in the bread dough.   The air pockets can be increased in homemade breads by using a high gluten flour or adding a dough enhancer such as gluten flour or lecithin granules.

Grilled cheese sandwiches fall into the category of comfort food but that doesn't mean they have to be boring.  It is surprising how much a different bread can accent the flavour!  The bread had a lovely Asiago flavour that melded nicely with the Swiss and Cheddar cheeses.  Again this is taking advantages of layering the flavours.  The rule of thumb when layering flavours is to use three.  In this case three cheese flavours were layered resulting in a delightful grilled cheese sandwich.  The bread really made this sandwich though with the deep air pockets capturing the wonderful flavours.  Doesn't it look scrumptious?