Making party sandwiches - freezing bread before cutting?

[Slipper]

My daughter's baptism is tomorrow and I'm serving refreshments afterwards. How do I make my party sandwiches look nice? If I freeze the bread and assemble the sandwiches early tomorrow morning (cutting off crusts), will they thaw by noon? I'm serving chicken salad and pimento cheese.

[Alessandra]

I have success with a method my mother used. I cover the sandwiches with one layer of waxed paper and then a layer of dampened paper towels. It works if sandwiches are on a plate and also if they are in a plastic container.

 

Btw, I use a firm bread, like Pepperidge Farm Extra Thin Sliced (I think that's the name). I also have a thing that allows me to slice a regular slice in half, but buying the thin bread is much easier. The thin bread doesn't dry out.

 

Sorry, I can't answer your exact question, as I've never frozen sandwiches.

[merry gardens]

You could try putting them together today, then freezing them and defrosting them in the morning in the fridge. I've had luck making tea sandwiches using a cheap sandwich loaf where the bread slices look very square. If you want to use homemade bread, rosemary bread works great a simple chicken salad. Some other nice variations are using both the white and wheat so that they have different colors--sometimes a different color on each side. You can slice the sandwiches into quarter, cutting different flavored sandwiches differently, so that all tri-angles are one flavor, all squares another, and all rectangles a third flavor. If you are going to freeze the sandwiches already filled, be aware that freezing usually destroys the cell structure of vegetables, (so celery would be soggy instead of crunchy.) Cut them, then wrap them in their full 4-part sandwich shape. When defrosting, separate one 4 part sandwich from another so there's more surface area. Separate them into quarters when plating them. And if you have leaf lettuce, they look nice when laid on a bed of frilly leaf lettuce.

[jhschool]

I don't think the bread would be very nice if it was frozen and then thawed.

[Slipper]

What I ended up doing was freezing the bread. I took the loaves out this morning and assembled the sandwiches while the bread was frozen. That way I could cut the crusts and cut them in half without the bread squishing up. They tasted great. Assembling took less than an hour, so I'm definitely doing it again. :) Thanks for all the suggestions.

[tex-mex]

I don't think the bread would be very nice if it was frozen and then thawed.

 

:confused1: We buy bread in bulk and freeze bread all of the time. It does not affect the look or taste if done properly.

 

For example, this morning, I took out a frozen King's Hawaiian bread (uncut) from my deep freeze. I sliced it while frozen and let it sit on the counter for 15 minutes while prepping the egg mixture. By the time my pan was piping hot and ready, the slices were perfectly thawed and ready to absorb the egg mix. My family ate it up voraciously and it was a hit.