Nicholas Gavin is the Culinary Creative Director of ChefSteps, where he develops recipes and is responsible for making all the food look beautiful. Nick has worked at ChefSteps for over a decade; he and ChefSteps co-founder Grant Crilly worked together at Modernist Cuisine. Nick has worked in professional kitchens both in the United States and abroad, most notably at Mugaritz in San Sebastian, Spain.

Nicholas Gavin

You can’t make a bánh mì without bánh mì, the bread. That’s right: In Vietnamese, the name of the sandwich is the name of the bread. “Bánh mì” refers to a roll with a very crispy, crackly, fissured, eggshell-thin crust that shatters when you bite into it. It has a soft, tight crumb that has just the right amount of chew and a feathery cotton candy–like consistency. It’s the perfect sandwich bread. Unlike a baguette, with its thicker, robust, microblistered crust, you can take a clean bite out of a bánh mì, even if it has been stuffed to the gills with fillings. And unlike a soft sandwich roll, it’s got character—it isn’t just a pillow-soft canvas onto which you paint mustard and mayo and lay down layers of deli meat. When served as a sandwich, the contrast between the super crisp crust and the super soft crumb mirrors the contrasting textures that make bánh mì—the sandwich—so pleasurable to eat. Crisp, fresh and pickled vegetables are paired with creamy mayo, butter, and/or pâté; the bouncy chew of meat and cold cuts are paired with the soft, leafy tangle of fresh herbs. You really can’t sub it out with some other type of bread and call what you’re making a bánh mì, even if you do everything else right. Finding good bánh mì can be something of a challenge, unless you live in a place with a thriving Vietnamese community. If you do, you can ask your favorite bánh mì spot to share with you where they source their bread from, and if they’re kind and tell you, you’re all set. But if you can’t find someone who makes a good bánh mì and you can’t buy the bread from a bakery, then your only options are to settle for an approximation of the real thing (no, thanks!), or make the bread yourself from scratch (now we’re talking!). To get the light, fluffy crumb of a good bánh mì, commercial bakers in Vietnam rely on vigorous mixing in commercial stand mixers, as well as a dough conditioner sold under the name “S500,” a combination of enzymes, emulsifiers, and oxidation agents that improve the rise, texture of the crumb and crust, and extend shelf life. The resulting dough quadruples in size during proofing, which gives you an idea of how resilient and elastic the gluten network becomes. Replicating that kind of gluten development without the conditioner and a heavy-duty mixer was tricky; kneading the dough in a similar way in a small stand mixer would run the risk of burning out the motor, even if you could keep the mixer from scootching itself off the counter. A brief autolyse and some ascorbic acid help boost the gluten potential of the dough. We then dialed in the hydration and lightly enriched the dough with butter and sugar to increase the amount of water it can hold onto. The resulting dough is strong but extensible, which allows for slapping and rolling it when shaping (almost like a portion of croissant dough) and achieves the chewy, wispy, and cotton candy–like crumb we were chasing. To get that crispy, fissured crust, we create a humid environment in the oven by adding a sheet pan of water on a lower rack, and then spray the heck out of the surfaces of the shaped and proofed rolls as they bake—we really drench them. This process gelatinizes and dehydrates the starches in the crust repeatedly, yielding a blond, crackly shell.

Bánh Mì Bread