The Best Grilled Cheese Bread Is an Inside-Out Croissant

When I was young, I used to fantasize about grocery shopping. Not at the grocery store with my mom, which was rife with rules and regulations, but at the grocery store as an adult, alone, for the first time. In this fantasy, I would buy Oreos, Ben & Jerry’s, white bread, American cheese, and giant plastic shells with croissants (preferably at Costco).

I don’t remember my first grocery shopping trip as an adult, but today I regularly buy everything except croissants. Something about buying a dozen buttercream croissants for a 1-1/2 family seems overly indulgent, especially if I already have a loaf of white bread in my cart. But it’s my mother who thinks, but I’m not a mother and I don’t live with her. As a sign of the rebellion against my mother in my head, I recently bought croissants and made an incredible, overly indulgent grilled cheese sandwich with them.

Croissants are the best grilled cheese bread. You just need to turn them inside out first. Expose all the flaky layers inside the dough (already quite oily) and brush them with plenty of oil. Put a layer of cheese between the two halves, pressing them against the former “outside” of the croissant, and fry it all in a pan.

The layered, flaky interior of the croissant sizzles and browns, resulting in embarrassing crunchy patches and great textural contrast. If any cheese melts and sticks to the sides and to the pan, you can push the bread to pick it up, creating crispy frico pieces around the edges of the sandwich. The end result is incredibly rich, with a flavor that I would describe as “oily”. It’s perfect and I wouldn’t change anything about the whole process (other than the frequency with which I buy large packs of croissants).

Fried cheese with croissant inside out

Ingredients:

• 1 store-bought butter croissant
• 1-2 tablespoons melted butter
• 2 slices American cheese (deli white American if possible)

Cut the croissant in half and brush the inside with melted butter. Use a moderately heavy hand and do not leave dry patches. Heat a non-stick skillet over medium heat and place one half of the croissant in it, cut side down. Top with cheese, then place the other half of the croissant on top of the cheese, cut side up.

Press down on the top of the sandwich with a spatula to flatten it out and flatten it a bit, and let it cook for a few minutes until it’s golden brown and crispy. Flip over and repeat on the other side. Enjoy immediately.