Bread Vs Cheese: Which Is More Crucial To The Ultimate Grilled Cheese?

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In theory, a grilled cheese is one of the most straightforward foods around. Despite myriad grilled cheese hacks awaiting the much-adored sandwich, many children can easily make it with just two ingredients, similar to a quesadilla or even pouring a bowl of cereal. Due to a grilled cheese's simplicity, both the bread and the cheese used in the sandwich should be top quality, but is one element more important than the other? 

As the former kitchen manager of a cheese store, I've made hundreds of grilled cheeses in my life. At the store, we used a combination of Comté cheese and a two-year-aged Hooks white cheddar, as well as fresh sourdough bread from a local bakery. 

We would pile one slice of bread high with thin shavings of cheese and coat the outsides of the sourdough slices with salted butter before transferring to a panini press. This method made for a gloriously crispy outside with a meltingly gooey inside. The toasted sandwich was served with a side of cornichons and whole pickled carrots to cut through the richness of the dish. In this scenario, the cheeses and the bread were high-quality products in their own right. Both cheeses melt well, and Comté brings a nuttiness to the sandwich, while cheddar lends classic sharpness. Sturdy yet fluffy sourdough crisps beautifully when coated in fat and applied to heat. Since both the bread and cheese are so crucial, it's difficult to say which element's excellence is non-negotiable ... but if we had to choose, we could.

While many people hold a nostalgic soft spot for neon-orange slices of American cheese product melted between two slices of packaged white bread, that simply doesn't hold a candle to a gourmet grilled cheese, especially when you can elevate the sandwich à la Thomas Keller, with brown butter, brioche, and Gruyère. No matter what kind of cheese or bread you use, one of the most important rules you can follow when making a grilled cheese is to eat it while it's still hot, gooey, and crispy. Letting it sit and get cold, soggy, and coagulated is just about the worst thing you can do to a grilled cheese.

Good bread and cheese are essential to the success of the dish; however, I believe that you have a bit more wiggle room with the bread than the cheese. You can doctor up subpar bread by spreading butter or mayonnaise on the outside (or a combination of the two, if you're feeling wild) to improve its flavor. Leftover bacon grease would also work well. Toasting the bread to perfection can improve the texture, covering any lacking qualities that your two slices may be harboring. The cheese, however, has little room to hide, being the star ingredient of the namesake sandwich. In contrast to the many ways you can boost mediocre bread, there's not much you can do to mask the taste and texture of inferior cheeses.