Tom Douglas - The Dahlia Bakery Cookbook: Sweetness in Seattle

Dahlia BakeryPick up a couple coco pie bites and a cup of coffee and sit at a table outside. Get a loaf of pecan flaxseed bread and take it to eat in your hotel or throw it in your suitcase.

Sur La TableThe original store is in the Pike Place Market and is still the greatest place to fill any holes in your baking arsenal, from pans to parchment to pastry tips.

Le Panier in the Pike Place MarketOne of the oldest French-style bakeries in the city. Buy a couple friande cookies and sit at the counter overlooking the market.

Fran Bigelow is Seattles Queen of Chocolate. Her posh new showplace is the Frans Chocolate next to the Four Seasons Hotel on 1st Avenue. Purchase a few of her justly famous salted caramels or a jar of intensely rich chocolate sauce.

Take a bus to Ballard and check out Theo Chocolate for bean to bar fair trade, organic chocolates.

While youre in Ballard, stand in line for a perfect croissant or a custardy slice of quiche at Besalu.

Also in Ballard, try a molten chocolate cake at Autumn Martins new shop, Hot Cakes.

Take a cab to Eastlake Ave. E to my favorite of the Grand Central stores. If the crusty-edged coconut layer cake is on offer, grab a slice.

Take light rail to Columbia City and stop by Columbia City Bakery. The seeded baguettes are killer!

Need a cuppa with that pastry? Youre in Seattle! Pick up a few bags of coffee beans to take home and compare. My favorite is still Starbucks (the original store is in the Pike Place Market), but also try Vivace, Vita, Zoka, and Lighthouse Roasters, to name a few other coffee bean companies that got their start in the Emerald City.

The finished Classic sandwich

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

English muffin sammies are the most popular breakfast at Dahlia Bakery. They fly out the door every morning. I was honored when Serious Eats, the website founded by my friend the food writer Ed Levine, called my Dahlia Bakery egg sandwiches one of the best breakfast sandwiches in the country.

Be sure to get the English muffins well toasted so they get crisp and crunchy. To make a great, drippy, luscious breakfast sandwich with all that soft ooze of egg yolk and cheese, you need good crunch for balance.

When the Dahlia line cooks fry eggs for breakfast sandwiches at the Bakery, they cook them over medium and even stab the yolks to get them more thoroughly cooked because customers take the sandwiches to eat on the run, and we dont want egg yolk dripping on their clothing. But at home you can cook the eggs any way you like. Over-easy eggs will give you deliciously runny yolks to add sauce to your sandwich!

Dahlia cooks use thinly sliced hand-cured and hand-smoked pork loin, which tastes very much like good quality ham, on the Dahlia Bakery breakfast sandwiches. Since you probably wont be able to find this product unless you make it yourself, we just call for thinly sliced ham in the recipe below.

Make or just use store-bought English muffins.

2 teaspoons unsalted butter, plus more as needed for cooking the eggs

8 ounces thinly sliced good-quality ham, such as Vande Rose Duroc ham

4 English muffins, split, toasted, and buttered

About 4 teaspoons Dijon mustard

Four 1-ounce slices Gruyre or Swiss cheese

4 large eggs

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 450F.

Put 2 teaspoons of butter in a skillet over medium heat. Divide the ham into 4 equal piles and place them in the saut pan. Warm the ham gently, turning each pile with a spatula to warm both sides, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from the heat.

Put the bottom halves of the toasted muffins on a baking sheet, buttered sides up, spread with about a teaspoon of mustard, and put a pile of ham on top. Top the ham with a slice of cheese. Put the baking sheet in the oven for a couple minutes until the cheese is melted. (If the top halves of the toasted muffins have cooled, you can place them in the oven as well.) Remove the pan from the oven.

Meanwhile, in a large nonstick skillet, using butter as needed, cook the eggs over easy or over medium to your liking. Season the eggs with salt and pepper to taste.

Place the ham-and-cheese-topped muffins halves on 4 plates. Top each one with a cooked egg, then put the other muffin half on top, buttered side down, to make a sandwich. Repeat with the remaining muffins to make 4 sandwiches and serve hot.

Cooking an egg on the flat top

Putting a slice of cheese on top of the ham (or smoked pork loin)

Putting egg, ham (or smoked pork loin), and cheese on the bottom half of an English muffin

CLASSIC SANDWICH WITH SAUSAGE, EGG, AND CHEDDAR

Omit the ham and the instructions for warming the ham. Use 12 ounces breakfast sausage links or 4 breakfast sausage patties. Cook the sausage and drain off the fat. If using links, cut them in half lengthwise and place 2 or 3 sausage halves (depending on the size of your links) or 1 sausage patty on the bottom half of each toasted and buttered muffin. Instead of Gruyre, top the sausage on each muffin half with a 1-ounce slice of cheddar. Put the muffin halves on a baking sheet, melt the cheese in the oven, cook the eggs, and finish the sandwiches as in the master recipe.

CLASSIC SANDWICH WITH BACON, EGG, AND CHEDDAR

Proceed as for the sausage egg sandwich variation, using 8 strips of cooked and drained bacon, or 2 slices per sandwich, instead of the sausage. Top the egg with a small mound of arugula before placing the top half of the muffin on the sandwich.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

Make this sandwich when ripe, delicious tomatoes are in season. We use tomatoes from our Prosser Farm in eastern Washington. Your own garden tomatoes or tomatoes purchased from the farmers market will be perfect here, whether they are heirloom varieties or not. If your tomatoes are small, use a couple slices for each sandwich instead of just one. Instead of parsley, tarragon, and chives, you can use any combination of fresh herbs that you like.