The Italian Bread Bobby Flay Swears By For Scrambled Egg Breakfast Sandwiches
People may argue over whether the best breakfast sandwich is made on a bagel, English muffin, roll, or biscuit. But for Bobby Flay, there's only one carb worthy of housing scrambled eggs, cheese, and cured meat: Italian focaccia bread. And not just any focaccia bread. Flay says that during the "lockdown" portion of the COVID-19 pandemic, he "got into baking this focaccia developed by Samin Nosrat for her show 'Salt Fat Acid Heat'" (via Food Network). This Italian bread has a crisp crust and a soft, chewy interior. It's pretty easy to make, though it does need to rise for 12-24 hours, so you'll want to plan ahead if you want to have some on hand for breakfast a la Flay.
What sets Nosrat's focaccia recipe apart from the loaf you might get from the bakery at your grocery store? For one thing, it has the advantage of being fresh bread. And secondly, hers is bursting with flavor, thanks to ample use of extra virgin olive oil, and a sea salt brine. You likely won't have to worry about the bread dulling the other flavors in your breakfast sandwich recipe; on the contrary, the many textures and seasoned flavor of the focaccia will make the other ingredients in your sandwich sing.
Assemble the sandwich
Bobby Flay's focaccia scrambled egg breakfast sandwiches start with homemade focaccia slices that are cut in half and lightly toasted. Toasting the focaccia helps prevent it from getting soggy, but don't toast it for too long, or your sandwich might be hard to eat. Next up, Flay makes his scrambled eggs. These are special, too. After whisking, he strains them through a fine-mesh sieve, which helps ensure a creamy scramble. He adds butter and crème fraîche to the eggs for a rich flavor and custard-like consistency.
Two additional flavor bombs in Flay's scrambled egg focaccia sandwiches are Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (the kind Giada De Laurentiis would approve of) and crispy pieces of prosciutto. The eggs are spooned over the bottom half of a toasted focaccia square, topped with prosciutto, and finally crowned with the top piece of focaccia. The bread is golden and crunchy at the edges, but chewy inside; the scrambled eggs are creamy and cheesy; the prosciutto is salty and crisp. It might not be the kind of breakfast sandwich you can get at a bodega, but if you're going to the extra work of making Italian focaccia bread from scratch, you might as well follow Flay's lead and level up the other ingredients, too.