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Bread and Butter Checkers
For the checkers use a loaf of brown bread and a loaf of white bread. First cut loaves into inch thick slices. Butter the slices thickly with soft butter. Lay a brown slice on a white slice, with the buttered sides together, butter the top of the brown side and repeat, reversing the colors. Make two piles with the colors reversed. Trim the crusts off the two piles evenly. Put them in the ice box under a light weight. When the butter has set, cut slices an inch thick from both piles; butter these slices with soft butter, place them together; arrange the colors so they alternate. Two squares deep and four squares long is a good size. Put the bread again into the ice box under a light weight and when wanted cut slices desired thickness so the slice will be made of alternate brown and white squares.
This is assembly work, and it succeeds or fails on two things: bread cut to a consistent thickness and butter soft enough to spread without tearing but cold enough to set into mortar.
- The hinge: butter as glueThe butter is structural, not seasoning. It must be genuinely soft — creamed to a mayonnaise consistency at room temperature — and spread edge to edge; melted butter soaks in and will not hold the blocks together when chilled.
- "Brown bread"In American sandwich work of this period this generally means a whole wheat or graham sandwich loaf; a dark rye or pumpernickel gives the strongest contrast. Whichever you use, it needs a tight, even crumb that slices cleanly rather than a crumbly one, and a square-sided loaf that matches the white one in size.
- Ice boxThe refrigerator. Chill each stage 30 to 45 minutes, until the butter is firm to a fingertip press. Overnight is fine if the stacks are wrapped so the cut faces do not dry out.
- The light weightA small cutting board with a can or two on top is enough. Heavy weighting squeezes the butter out of the seams and compresses the crumb into something gummy.
- CuttingUse a long serrated knife, wiped between cuts, and cut in one draw rather than sawing. Slice the bread from a loaf that is a day old — fresh bread drags and tears.
- Consistency of measureThe inch measurement matters more than its exact value: whatever thickness you cut, cut it the same every time or the squares will not line up. A ruler laid alongside the stack is not overkill here.
- Final slicesFor serving, cut thinner than an inch — about 3/8 to 1/2 inch reads as a sandwich rather than a brick, and the checkerboard pattern shows better.
- YieldDepends entirely on the size of the loaves, how much crust is trimmed away and how thin the final slices are cut; two loaves make a substantial platter's worth. Serve the day they are cut; the assembled block keeps a day wrapped, but the cut faces stale fast.
Checkerboard and ribbon sandwiches belong to the era of the buffet tea and the cocktail party, when the point of a sandwich at a party was to be looked at as much as eaten. They depended on a square-sided loaf, uniform enough to make geometry possible, and on an ice box that let a cook chill butter hard on demand instead of hoping the larder was cold. The same period produced pinwheels, rolled asparagus sandwiches and the loaf frosted with cream cheese — all variations on treating bread as a building material.