Fool’s Gold Loaf

I am not a particularly well-off man, financially speaking. I do OK. I make enough to feed a family of 5 pretty well, which is definitely an accomplishment these days. But you’re always looking to do a little better, right? I’ve been asked multiple times recently what my ideal job would be. I haven’t hesitated with my answer: “For somebody to pay me millions of dollars to eat sandwiches.”

So far, that offer has not been forthcoming.

However, if I were rich, like Elvis-rich, like mansion-and-private-jet rich, I would most definitely be the kind of guy who, upon hearing a description of an exciting and exotic new sandwich, would get excited enough to fly to a far-away city in the middle of the night and try it.

I don’t think the Fool’s Gold Loaf would be the sandwich to entice me though. More of a stunt than a sandwich, and seemingly invented just to pique Elvis’ notoriously proletarian palate, the Fool’s Gold Loaf is one of those sandwiches that people have been bringing up since we started this project, one of those “I can’t wait until you get to the…” sandwiches. Now that I’ve tasted it (several of them in fact), I just can’t say that I get it.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Fool’s Gold Loaf consists of a loaf of French or Italian bread, buttered and rebaked to crisp up the crust, sliced open, hollowed out, and filled with a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jelly, and a pound of bacon. It was invented at a restaurant in Denver called The Colorado Mine Company, and gained notoriety after some Colorado law enforcement types were hanging out with Elvis at Graceland late one night, told him about the sandwich, and he flew them all to Denver to try it immediately. (Not just one or two of the things either, but 22 of them, along with Perrier and champagne according to the story)

I’m not gonna eat 22 of these things. I’m not sure I could even put down 1.

One is in fact all I thought I was going to even make. Historically it was made with blueberry preserves, but cherry is my wife’s favorite, so I decided to use both.

I bought a loaf of Italian bread at usual suspect Breadsmith. I buttered the loaf all over and baked it at 350 for around 15 minutes.

Meanwhile I cooked a pound of bacon

I sliced open the Italian bread, scooped out some of the crumb, then emptied a jar of peanut butter into the bottom half.

and the top half with a different kind of jelly at each end.

I put the bacon in the middle

and then cut it into about inch-thick slices. The Italian loaf was so huge though that I had to cut the whole thing down the middle lengthwise to make each slice manageable.

The cherry was OK but something about the flavor of blueberry preserves just worked so well with the bacon that I almost was convinced of the greatness of this sandwich.

Almost. It’s still a big unwieldy stunt, complicated to put together and messy to eat, and way too much food for normal people.

Which is why I decided to feed it to a bunch of drunks instead.

Every year, during the South Side Irish Parade the weekend before St. Patrick’s Day, my friend, fellow homebrewer, and circus weirdo Paul throws a backyard barbecue. Last year I used the cookout as an excuse to test a fried chicken recipe on my friends for a different website, so I figured why not try this monster sandwich on them as well?

This time I got Vienna loaves from d’Amato’s Bakery, which were much less unwieldy than the big Italian loaf I’d gotten from Breadsmith (though I do like that bread too).

I got three of these beautiful loaves, so that I could try a couple of the more popular jam/jelly/preserves flavors in America, grape and strawberry. The third was destined for something altogether weirder.

I put the sandwiches together much the same way as before, with the important difference that the bread was a more appropriate size. Still gigantic and ridiculous for a single sandwich, but at least better composed.

If you’ve read my previous writeup on the Fluffernutter, you may have already deduced what unholy hybrid monstrosity I came up with to try that day as well–the SPAM Fluffernutter Fool’s Gold Loaf. A jar of peanut butter, a jar of marshmallow creme, and a 12oz can of sliced, fried spam, stuffed into a Vienna loaf as if these things had any business being together.

Sadly, no plan survives contact with the enemy, and the enemy of a backyard barbecue is rain. When I arrived at Paul’s, a few people were huddled in groups inside the house, some near the kitchen (that’s where the whiskey was) and some in the basement (that’s where the beer was). Nobody seemed too interested in trying a weird PB&J variant. I did get a few takers though. I got into the strawberry version first.

Like cherry, the strawberry was fine but just didn’t dazzle. The grape jelly however, much like the blueberry, just worked somehow. Something about the darker fruit lined up right with the smokey cured crisp-and-greasy bacon and the sandwich was good.

I’m sad to say though that, as great as the spam fluffernutter itself was, the spam fluffernutter Fool’s Gold Loaf didn’t work as well. Spam doesn’t fare as well as bacon does once it’s allowed to cool down, and what had been an exciting pocket of hot-and-salty grease in the middle of the normal sandwich, by the time I’d packed these sandwiches in bags (BIG bags) and driven to Paul’s house, became a chewing obstacle in the middle of this ridiculous thing.

I still ate the hell out of it though.

However, between my friends and I, and my family later that night after I’d gone home, we were not equal to the task of fully consuming these three gigantic piles of fat and carbs. Sadly, I discarded the remnants in a fridge-cleaning a few days later.

Don’t waste food, kids. Don’t make these big stupid things. If you must, if you absolutely must try one, make sure you’ve got enough people around you to finish the thing. Or if you happen to be in or near Colorado, try one at Nick’s Cafe in Golden. The Colorado Mining Company is no longer around but the owner of Nick’s Cafe, Nick Andurlakis, claims to have had a hand in the original. And I believe he serves it by the slice.