May. 27, 2024
Machinery
Please visit our website for more information on this topic.
This is just one of the stories from our &#;I&#;ve Always Wondered&#; series, where we tackle all of your questions about the world of business, no matter how big or small. Ever wondered if recycling is worth it? Or how store brands stack up against name brands? Check out more from the series here.
Marketplace reader and listener Susan Lund from Washington, D.C., asked:
Why are some hot dog buns split on the top and some split on the side? I grew up in New England and ate a lot of hot dogs. The bun was always split on the top. I was surprised to learn later in life that not all hot dog buns are split this way. Why? Splitting a bun on the side seems to defeat the purpose of keeping the toppings on the top.
The hot dog &#; despite its humble quality or, perhaps, because of it &#; has inspired some of the great philosophical inquiries of our time, puzzling experts and instigating vigorous debate.
Does ketchup belong on a hot dog? Is a hot dog a sandwich?
The simple oblong American hot dog, infinitely customizable, allows us to project onto it our personal tastes, our customs, our hometown pride. Condiments, the type of sausage link and, yes, even the way the bun is sliced, have all been subject to regional influences.
You can typically find side-sliced hot dog buns at grocery stores around the country, where they&#;re spliced nearly all the way through, with a &#;hinge&#; keeping both sides connected.
But top-sliced buns &#; also known as New England-style or frankfurter buns &#; are cut vertically, from the top of the bun (as the name would imply).
The top-sliced bun tends to have greater structural integrity than its side-sliced counterpart, enabling consumers to load it up with toppings, and its features are rectangular, rather than tubular.
There&#;s no agreement on what the first hot dog (including its bun) looked like, with the only written evidence about it in various newspaper accounts, according to Bruce Kraig, food historian and author of the book &#;Hot Dog: A Global History.&#; Kraig noted the earliest written record is from Coney Island in the s. &#;There&#;s no telling; it could have been a regular white bread bun,&#; he said.
Hot dog buns that are top-sliced can be traced to a chef at the former restaurant chain Howard Johnson&#;s who, in the s, asked the Maine bakery J.J. Nissen to develop a bun for its fried clam strip sandwich.
Michael Cornelis, vice president of American Pan, told The Boston Globe that prior to the advent of New England&#;style rolls, commercial bakers used to slice buns all the way through. The side-sliced hot dog and hamburger buns many Americans are familiar with today originated sometime in the mid-&#;50s with the invention of the mechanical side slicer.
Reached by Marketplace this week, Cornelis said that if you take stock of the type of hot dog consumed at carnivals, fairs, ball games and hot dog-eating contests, most appear to be side-sliced. Cornelis presented some possible reasons for the side-sliced&#;s dominance: For one, he said, the New England variety may be a little &#;bready&#; for some people.
&#;And I would think, as a producer, the side slice is more cost-efficient. It&#;s an easier bun to produce. It&#;s probably less waste, a little less dough,&#; Cornelis said.
The well-known brand Wonder sells both variations of buns. Wonder Classic Hot Dog Buns &#; which are side-split &#; account for 97% of total hot dog bun sales, according to Ashley Smith, the company&#;s brand manager.
&#;Sales of Wonder Top-Sliced Frankfurter Buns &#; are focused in the Northeast region of the country, where people have a different bun perspective,&#; Smith said via . &#;The buns are baked in Maine and are not just used for hot dogs, but also for the area&#;s popular lobster rolls.&#;
Kraig said he thinks hot dogs spur so much conversation by virtue of being deeply embedded in American culture.
&#;For example, coneys in Detroit are distinctly Detroit or Southeast Michigan. And it&#;s their thing,&#; Kraig said. &#;Chicago hotdogs are distinctly their own thing, and Chicagoans fight about it and argue about it.&#;
There&#;s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world&#;s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
Featured content:For more information, please visit QinLi.
This isn&#;t even a debate. The criteria for sandwich are pretty simple:
Bread is bread. I don&#;t know too many people who don&#;t understand what bread is but just to be clear &#;bread&#; includes buns, baps, bagels, baguettes, rolls, focaccia, brioche, sourdough, pita, and yes, it includes &#;hot dog buns&#;.
A hot dog bun is made the exact same way that you make a &#;French&#; roll for a Philly Cheesesteak: water, bread flour, yeast, sugar, milk powder and salt. Ferment that for a few hours, shape it into a log, bake it. A hot dog bun is just a scaled down version of any of the larger &#;sub&#; breads. And if you need any more convincing that a hot dog bun is the exact same as any of the main &#;sandwich&#; breads, a Lobster Roll (the undisputed king of all sandwiches) is served on&#; a hot dog bun.
Things that don&#;t count as bread? Lettuce, rice wrappers, tortillas, and dips for deep frying. Larb gai is delicious but it&#;s not a sandwich. I love me some spring rolls but they aren&#;t sandwiches. If you want a Vietnamese sandwich, you take some French bread and add Vietnamese ingredients. A burrito isn&#;t a sandwich, again, if you want to make a Mexican sandwich (a torta), you take pan telera and put Mexican ingredients in it. This isn&#;t rocket science, it&#;s sandwich 101.
This is why a corndog isn&#;t a sandwich. People like to misdirect others by pointing at the corndog but just because both a hot dog sandwich and a corndog have hot dogs in them doesn&#;t make them taxonomically the same. A corndog has more in common with tempura; it is a batter dipped, deep fried meat. Is batter bread? NO! This conversation never happens:
Customer: &#;I&#;ll have the pastrami sandwich.&#;
Deli guy: &#;what cheese?&#;
Customer: &#;swiss.&#;
Deli guy: &#;ok, what bread?&#;
Customer: &#;batter.&#;
Deli guy: &#;batter?&#;
Customer: &#;yes, take my sandwich innards, batter them, deep fry them, and put the whole shit-show on a stick so I can eat it like a child or a Spurs fan. Make sure the batter is sickly sweet too.&#;
Bread, it&#;s simple, it&#;s a requirement for a sandwich, and a hot dog has bread.
Ok, now the filling. No one has any questions about whether a sandwich needs fillings, right? Two pieces of bread aren&#;t a sandwich but if you add even one or two other ingredients&#; bing! You got a sandwich! We even have a term for this: sandwiched. As in something is stuck between two other things. Yet, I feel like this one hangs people up because the hot dog meat is a tube meat and people think less of hot dogs than other more refined meats like pastrami, pulled pork, or bacon. But, there&#;s a local place called Zocalo which makes a torta that has hot dogs in it and it is my favorite torta.
Now, before you say that a sandwich needs two distinct pieces of bread around the filling (or go full dumb and pretend that the breads need to be flat) I will point you to the following sandwiches which are made from round breads that are sliced open but not fully bisected:
So, the bread can just be split open. It doesn&#;t need to be two slices of bread or a fully split open hoagie roll to be a sandwich. In fact, sometimes you like to have a hanging on bit &#; like in the meatball sub &#; which helps keep the whole thing together.
That&#;s why a hot dog bun is a sandwich bun. You could put other things in there, you know. My kid and I do it all the time. But hey, if you want, you could also take a knife and split the hot dog bun in half.
Now we have a bread, we have a filling, and what&#;s the third criteria? That said object is eaten out of hand. Again, this is a no-brainer. The Earl of Sandwich invented the sandwich so that he could play poker and eat at the same time. A sandwich, therefore, should be something you can pick up and eat. Do you have to eat a sandwich out of hand? No, you could cut into it with a fork and knife but then you&#;d be like the guy who eats pizza with a fork and knife.
Even Smørbrød, which are the open-faced sandwiches from Scandinavia and are typically eaten with a fork, can sometimes be picked up. However, Smørbrød does raise some interesting taxonomic problems. In many ways Smørbrød is less of a sandwich than a hotdog because there&#;s almost no &#;sandwiching&#; going on there and they are difficult to eat out of hand. Pizza is closer to a sandwich than Smørbrød. And some smart pizza folks figured out how to make pizza more sandwich-like and called it &#;Calzone.&#;
But this post isn&#;t &#;Smørbrød is not a sandwich&#;: we &#;hot dog is a sandwich&#; folk try to be more of an inclusive bunch rather than exclusive. We aren&#;t sandwich fundamentalists. If you want to call your Kentucky Hot Brown a sandwich, that&#;s just fine. It&#;s very sandwich-like: it&#;s like if someone only had one piece of bread left and they still really wanted a sandwich, so they made this one-breaded thing. I can&#;t fault folks for not having enough bread and still wanting a sandwich, can I?
And before you try to get cute and ask if a Cornish Pasty is a sandwich &#;because it can be eaten out of hand and has filling&#; please go back to criteria number one: bread. Is pastry bread? No. It&#;s pastry or &#;pie crust&#;.
I swear, the things I have to explain to people.
So, a hot dog has bread, it&#;s got filling, I can eat it with one hand which brings me to the daddy of all reasons why a hotdog is a sandwich: toppings.
With very few exceptions, sandwiches need toppings. I know that when people are babies they don&#;t like any toppings on their sandwich but as you get older, you learn to appreciate a wider variety of flavors and toppings. Even just adding butter (for jamon beurre) or mayo (for cucumber tea) counts in my book, as does adding mustard on a hot dog.
But the beauty of the sandwich is that you can customize it, adding sauces and toppings to your mouth&#;s content! Maybe you don&#;t like onions or tomatoes? Leave them off! Or add more if you love them. I love all the toppings: tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, onions, secret sauce, mayo, sauerkraut, pickles, sriracha, jalapenos, cucumbers, hummus, avocado, cheese, and even that mint green relish that you sometimes get for hot dogs. I have a fridge and pantry chock full of toppings which I often experiment with.
And that&#;s the best thing about the sandwich: you can literally try anything. The other day I was watching the Chef Show with Jon Favreau and chef Roy Choi and chef Choi put lox and a remoulade sauce on a pastrami sandwich. That&#;s what sandwiching is all about, folks, and that&#;s why the hot dog is beyond definitively a sandwich.
The hot dog is actually the perfect sandwich because you can (and people do) top it with anything. For a quick reuben-style dog, go with russian dressing, cheese and sauerkraut! The Chicago Dog has peppers, relish, onions, tomatoes, and pickles! Bacon, peanut butter, cream cheese, grilled onions, chili, are all viable toppings for this most versatile of sandwiches. I bet you could do a Banh Mi dog and it would rock.
People who don&#;t want to accept the hot dog as a sandwich are the kind of people who want to tell you what movies to like, what music is &#;actually&#; good, and that Manchester United are &#;actually&#; a classy club. They also want to tell you what things you should put on your hot dog. Don&#;t be like them, enjoy life and eat your hot dog sandwich however you like!
For more information, please visit Hotdogs Bread Forming Line.
If you are interested in sending in a Guest Blogger Submission,welcome to write for us!
All Comments ( 0 )