Do It Yourself "Thin" Bread and Turkey Apple Cranberry Sandwich

When we started paying closer attention to how we "spent" our calories my husband and I found that we ate significantly less bread than we were used to.  In many cases I skipped bread because it would have used up all the food budget for my meal before I even put anything on it.  Additionally by skipping bread I also passed on most of the condiments I would have put on the bread. When we grilled brats or burgers at home I would skip the bun in favor of some multigrain chips or a whole grain side dish.  Similarly our sandwiches turned into low fat / low carb wraps. I usually don't mind giving up bread in favor of using my calories for other food but sometimes, gosh darn, I just want a sandwich.  

About two years ago major bread manufacturers released their "thin" sandwich breads and bagels.  I was skeptical but after trying Thomas' 100 Everything Bagel Thins I fell back in love with bread.  The thin products are a great way to have a sandwich or toast and use most of your calories on the filling.  The small down side to the "thin" products is their limited flavor options.

Around the same time the "thin" bread became widely available, we started to see some bread on our local grocery store shelves with a really catchy package.  Dave's Killer Bread, out of Milwaukie, Oregon, is a delicious product with a fantastic story.  Their vision, according to their website is, "to make the world a better place, one loaf of bread at a time." My husband and I began choosing Killer Bread over sandwich thins for all the reasons I just mentioned.  Problem is we would have to choose a half a sandwich to keep the calories reduced.  They do make a light bread but we really like the full on seed covered version.  So we resumed our life with sandwiches few and far between.

Then one day we got a tip from fellow Weight Watchers bread enthusiasts.  Their tip made me laugh when I heard it because it was so obvious but hadn't ever occurred to me.  Cut the bread in half.  Not to make two small pieces but more like filleting a fish.  The bread should be toasted at least a little and it is important to use a good knife but with a little bit of practice it is not difficult to make any bread "thin."

Last Saturday using homemade Killer Bread "thins" I made some really awesome turkey cranberry sandwiches.  

I began by throwing together a batch of low sugar cranberry sauce.  I went heavy on the orange zest and light on the sugar so it would be really tangy.

While the sauce cooked down, I tossed together a mix of white and dark turkey meat, half an apple, thinly sliced green onion, about 6 large basil leaves, a generous shake of dried dill, and some dry mustard.  I mixed in about 1/3 of a cup of plain non-fat yogurt to make it creamy but not heavy.


I built the sandwiches with the toasted side out and heaped the turkey and apple mixture onto a bed of mixed greens with the cooled cranberry sauce on the opposite side.  The filling was a little bulky for the thin slices of bread but they still did a decent job of holding together.


Served with a few pretzels and the remaining apple I don't think this sandwich will be featured in Gourmet Magazine but for a Saturday afternoon it was just the ticket!

*Major Update! - I was just checking out Dave's Killer Bread's website and saw new light versions of both Good Seed (75 calories a slice) and 21 Grain (65 calories a slice)!!!  The original versions are 130 and 110 calories, respectively.  It is still a little lighter to make them thin but I am very excited about these new versions of their original flavors.  I now *heart* Dave's even more!