The power of the bun

A meditation on making thousands of sandwiches

Ham, cheese and WCK signature sauce, with a sturdy Polish bun as bookends.

For the “cold side” kitchen volunteers, our days include a mix of prep — peeling and chopping massive amounts of uncooked vegetables — and making ham and cheese sandwiches.

Designed by WCK founder José Andrés himself, the sandwich was conceived as a real-food alternative to the government-issued MREs (meals, ready-to-eat) in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. The bun, at least the one in Poland, is about 3 inches tall, with an English muffin-style bottom and a pillowy burger-style top.

WCK has partnered with a bakery (piekarnia in Polish) in Przemysl to bake several thousand buns daily for this massive sandwich-building operation. Tucked inside the bun is a generous two-to-one ratio of ham to cheese. But what really sets this sandwich apart from any other ham-and-cheese on the planet is the sauce. A mix of mayo, ketchup, mustard and maybe dried herbs, the sauce is added twice via a pastry bag. It has multiple functions, including: keeping the sandwich moist, adding emergency calories and elevating flavor.

On average, our group is making about 3,000 sandwiches daily. By the end of Thursday, we cranked out 12, 258 sandwiches. For this kind of volume, an assembly line is critical. Everyone has a job, from laying down rolls to cutting plastic wrap.

That’s Frederick on the left, who’s been the resident saucer all week. Opposite him is Nick, who’s become an expert “meater.”

The work is harder than it looks. It’s repetitive, physically grueling and tedious. It’s messy. Move left to right, keep it going. There’s the business of ham juice dripping from the package and getting the sauce in the middle of the bun. And yet, this mind-numbing assembly is mission critical to providing sustenance to people in crisis.

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Yulia, a fellow sandwich maker, tells me that the word for bun in Ukrainian is bulochka.

Yulia.

And in her native Ukraine, the bulochka provides. It is a symbol of comfort, maybe even security. It’s what kids want for a snack.

There is power in the bun, she says.

Born and raised in Kharkiv, Yulia, 31, lives in New York, working as an accountant. Her parents remain in their apartment in Kharkiv, refusing to leaving their home, their city, their country.

I’m hoping they have access to a few good buns.