Good Old PB&J Update

For those who didn’t see the comment on the original PB&J post, there is a square sandwich cutter/sealer that can be found here.  Thanks so much to Crystal for passing this on to us!!

I mentioned that white and wheat bread work better than whole wheat.  As this has always been my experience with the bread I buy, I always wondered if there was a whole wheat bread out there that would work for these sandwiches.  After my post on Monday, I received a question from a reader regarding this issue.  Kimiko advised me that the Oroweat bread she buys at Wal-Mart is softer than other whole wheat breads and thought it might work.  So off to Wal-Mart I went.  I ended up buying three loaves of whole wheat bread.  Last night I experimented with all three and even conducted a blind taste test to see which one tasted best.  Okay, the only subject was my husband, because he was the only one available at ten o’clock last night.  Here are the results:

My least favorite was Oroweat’s Dutch Country 100% Whole Wheat ($1.97).  While it did seal, the bread itself had a coarser texture than the others and was drier.  It also seemed like it wanted to rip if you put too much inside.  The loaf is wider and squattier than regular loaves, making it too short and too wide for the cutter.  This one scored lowest in our blind taste test.

Oroweat’s Soft Family 100%Whole Wheat bread ($1.97) worked a lot better.  My main issue was that the loaf I bought had a lot of large air bubbles in it which meant that many of the slices were not suitable for spreading the peanut butter and jelly.  Does anyone out there buy this type of bread on a regular basis?  Is this common for this product or did I just pick the wrong loaf?  Other than that, it was great and ranked second in our blind taste test (though I preferred the taste of this one).

The bread that worked the best was Sara Lee’s Soft and Smooth Plus 100% Whole Wheat Made with DHA Omega-3 ($1.88).  This bread looks and tastes almost like white bread.  It produced a great crustless sandwich and sealed perfectly.  My husband chose this as his favorite in the taste test.

Conclusion:  Yes!!  You can make sealed crustless sandwiches with whole wheat bread!!  I already have a loaf’s worth in my freezer.