Homemade Sandwich Rolls

These homemade sandwich rolls take a little bit of time to make, but they’re actually super easy and better than just about any sandwich roll I’ve ever had.

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We have a lot of stuff in my house. Try living in a house with four adults, a toddler and a baby and you’ll realize how quickly stuff accumulates. So for the past few years, whenever one of my house-member’s birthdays rolls around, I don’t want to get more things. Instead I’ve decided to make the birthday-person a special breakfast. Absolutely anything they want under the sun, and I’ll go all-out making it. In the past I’ve made these bialys for my brother and a version of these pancakes with a lemon drizzle for my sister-in-law. And for her most recent birthday a few weeks ago, she requested a bacon egg and cheese sandwich on a roll. But since birthdays are special, it couldn’t just be any roll. I decided to make these homemade sandwich rolls, and they came out better than just about any sandwich roll I’ve ever had.

Between my niece Scarlet watching cartoons and my brother and boyfriend watching video game videos, if our TV is on, there’s a good chance it’s playing something on YouTube. And while there’s a lot of not-so-good content on the platform, there’s also a lot of great stuff. One such great YouTuber is Brian Lagestrom, an ex-chef who has a bunch of super detailed and really delicious looking food videos. Last year we used one of his recipes to make this potato soup, so when I was looking for a really great recipe for sandwich rolls, I immediately turned to him. While he doesn’t have a sandwich roll specific recipe, I found this recipe for beef on weck, a classic upstate New York roast beef sandwich with “weck” essentially being a Kaiser roll. I used that recipe for these sandwich rolls, and they truly are incredibly delicious.

AN EASY ROLL TO MAKE

There’s really no great mystery or skill entailed in making these sandwich rolls. You’ll whip up a super simple dough using yeast, flour, water, some mashed potato (for a potato-roll vibe) with a touch of sugar, and then let them rise before brushing with an egg wash and sprinkling with flaky salt (chef Brian also uses caraway seeds on top to recreate the beef on weck, but I skipped them for a more traditional sandwich roll). Between the slight sweetness of the roll and the flaky salt on top, they almost have a pretzel roll vibe to them, and that slight sweetness will be the perfect balance to any salty sandwich ingredients. Yes, they take a little bit of time to make since there are two 90 minutes rises involved, but any bread recipe takes time, and this is actually a particularly simple one.

These sandwich rolls come out with a perfectly golden crust and fluffy, airy interior. They’re not super big, but I like that about them; it means you can stuff your sandwich with more ingredients and not get too full. Of course, since bacon egg and cheeses had been requested, we piled our high with crispy bacon, fluffy scrambled eggs and melty American cheese. In fact, they were so good that when I asked my brother (who’s birthday is in a few weeks) what he might want for his birthday breakfast, he considered asking for these exact sandwiches again. These rolls really are fantastic for a bacon-egg-and-cheese, and you should most definitely try them that way. But honestly, whatever ingredients you use, these homemade sandwich rolls are the perfect vessel to take any breakfast or lunch to the next level.