Bacon and Brie sandwich

Served on Sourdough bread with spicy tomato sauce

Written by Martin Seymour | Editor, The Mayfair Foodie | About Me

A bacon and brie sandwich is a hot, grilled sandwich made with crispy bacon, melted brie, sliced tomato, and a spicy tomato sauce, served on toasted sourdough bread. This recipe serves 1 and takes approximately 15 minutes to prepare and cook. The key ingredients are 3 rashers of collar or back bacon, 2 thick slices of sourdough, 4–5 slices of brie, a fresh tomato, mayonnaise, and a quick spicy sauce made from 3 tablespoons of tomato ketchup, 2 teaspoons of sweet chilli sauce, and a splash of Worcestershire sauce. The brie is melted directly onto the bacon under a hot grill for 2 minutes, giving it that signature oozy texture. Collar bacon — sourced here from Wylde Market online farmers’ market — is the preferred cut, offering a meatier, more marbled result than standard back bacon. The combination of creamy brie and savoury bacon is a classic British flavour pairing, particularly well suited to a weekend brunch served between 10am and 1pm. Optional additions include a fried or poached egg, a handful of rocket for a peppery finish, or a swap to Camembert for a more indulgent alternative.

Why This Became My New Favourite Saturday Brunch

Saturday mornings and brunch are best friends. For me, a nice, relaxing Saturday morning means catching up with friends on the phone and watching Saturday Morning Kitchen or James Martin — I’m a fan of both, which is unusual, as most of my friends are firmly in one camp or the other.

Then, about 11ish, it’s time to start thinking about brunch. Usually, it will involve eggs or a proper sausage. This is the absolute truth, and I’m slightly embarrassed to admit it, but I judge a hotel by the quality of the sausage they serve at breakfast. Good sausage, good hotel — end of.

Anyhow, last Saturday was different. I had two ingredients that were going to make up my brunch: a lovely sourdough loaf and collar bacon, which is not often seen on supermarket shelves. Both were bought from Wylde Market, the online farmers’ market — they arrived on Friday, and I was desperate to try them both.

So what else was going into my sandwich? I checked the fridge, and my conundrum was solved. I had enough creamy brie left over, and a lovely tomato (don’t get me started on the state of supermarket tomatoes), so that was the four main ingredients sorted. However, I needed something to set this brunch alight. How about a spicy tomato sauce? I contemplated making one from my Dishoom cookbook — it’s so good. They have a recipe for the tomato sauce they serve with their bacon naan, and if you haven’t been to a Dishoom breakfast, you absolutely must go. Anyhow, this was going to take too long to make (I’ll pop their recipe below), so back to the fridge it was — Heinz tomato ketchup and sweet chilli sauce. Problem solved: an instant spicy tomato sauce. I also added a splash of Worcestershire sauce.

So there we have it. Before I knew it, I had the best-looking sandwich for brunch: bacon, melted brie, slices of proper tomato, plenty of spicy tomato sauce, and a little handful of rocket — I was being cheffy. The sourdough was the perfect base for all the ingredients; you can’t make a good sandwich without good bread. The collar bacon was a delight, bacon and brie are the perfect match, the freshness of the tomato was spot on, and that lovely spicy sauce tied it all together. I was in brunch heaven.

So good, I’ve posted the recipe below, along with some alternatives that might also work.

If you’re like me and love brunch, please give this a try. Make one for your nearest and dearest too, and you’ll have a ton of brownie points that will last you at least until Sunday.

What is Brunch? A Brief History

Brunch is one of those words that feels like it’s always existed, but it actually has a surprisingly precise origin. It was coined in Britain in 1895 by a writer called Guy Beringer, who penned an article in Hunter’s Weekly championing a late Sunday meal that replaced the post-church roast with something lighter and more relaxed. His argument was simple: why force yourself through a heavy breakfast after a big Saturday night when you could have a leisurely late-morning meal that combined the best of both worlds? I think Guy and I would have got on famously.

The concept crossed the Atlantic, and the Americans, as they often do, absolutely ran with it. By the mid-twentieth century, brunch had become a genuine cultural institution in cities like New York and Los Angeles — long weekend queues outside neighbourhood cafés, bottomless mimosas, eggs Benedict as far as the eye could see. Back here in the UK, it took a little longer to fully embrace, but over the last couple of decade,s brunch culture has absolutely exploded. Every high street now has its brunch spot, every food market has its brunch stall, and quite rightly so.

For me, brunch occupies a very specific and precious slot in the weekend. It’s not rushed like a weekday breakfast and it’s not a formal sit-down affair like Sunday lunch. It exists in its own glorious, unhurried middle ground — somewhere between 10 am and 1 pm — and the food should reflect that. Something a little more considered than toast, but nothing that requires three hours at the stove. This bacon and brie sandwich hits that sweet spot perfectly.

The Spicy Tomato Sauce — and a Word About Dishoom

Let’s talk about the sauce, because I genuinely believe it’s what lifts this sandwich from very good to properly brilliant.

My starting point was the Dishoom cookbook — if you don’t already own it, stop what you’re doing and add it to your list. It is, without question, one of the most used books in my kitchen. Their tomato and chilli jam, which you’ll find on page 59, is the sauce they serve alongside the famous bacon naan roll at their restaurants, and it is an absolute revelation: deep, slow-cooked, spiced, a little sweet and genuinely fiery. If you have the time to make it properly, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It would be magnificent in this sandwich.

However. It was Saturday morning, I was hungry, and the clock was very much ticking. So I did what any sensible person does in that situation — I opened the fridge and improvised. Two tablespoons of Heinz tomato ketchup, a generous squeeze of sweet chilli sauce, and a good splash of Worcestershire sauce. Thirty seconds of stirring and you have something that is tangy, sweet, spicy and savoury all at once, and it comes together before the bacon has even finished in the pan.

Honestly? I’m not sure I’d do it differently next time. There’s something about the brightness of the ketchup and the heat of the sweet chilli that works perfectly against the richness of the melted brie. The Worcestershire sauce adds that little bit of depth and savouriness that stops it tasting like something you’d put on chips.

Sometimes the shortcut is genuinely the right answer. This is one of those times.

Variations Worth Trying

One of the things I love about a sandwich like this is that it’s really more of a framework than a fixed recipe. Once you’ve got the basic combination of great bread, something rich and melty, and something savoury and salty, you can start to play around. Here are a few variations I’d genuinely recommend:

Add an egg. A fried egg slipped in alongside the bacon takes this firmly into the territory of a full brunch in a sandwich. Go for a runny yolk if you’re brave — it mingles with the spicy sauce in a way that’s almost unreasonably good. A poached egg works equally well if you’d rather not risk the yolk situation.

Swap the bacon for sausage. A good quality pork sausage, split lengthways and cooked until golden, is a wonderful alternative. You want something with a bit of herb in it — a classic Cumberland works brilliantly. The key is getting it properly caramelised on the cut side so you get that sweet, slightly sticky exterior against the creamy brie.

Try a different cheese. Brie is my first choice here, but this sandwich is very forgiving. A good mature cheddar gives you a completely different flavour profile — sharper, more assertive, and stands up to the spicy sauce a little more forcefully. Camembert is the obvious brie substitute and is perhaps even more oozy and indulgent. For something a little more unusual, a smoked cheese works surprisingly well with bacon — smoky on smoky, if you will.

Change the bread. Sourdough is my preference and I’ll defend that choice robustly (more on that below), but a good ciabatta gives you a wonderful chew and soaks up the sauce beautifully. A crusty bloomer is the more traditional British sandwich loaf and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. If you want to lean into the indulgence, a toasted brioche bun turns this into something that wouldn’t look out of place on a brunch menu in Shoreditch.

Why Collar Bacon?

If you’ve ever wandered past the bacon section in a supermarket and wondered why it’s always back bacon or streaky bacon and nothing else, you’re not alone. Collar bacon tends to be the preserve of independent butchers, farm shops, and — as I discovered — online farmers’ markets like Wylde Market, and I think that’s a genuine shame because it’s a brilliant cut.

Collar bacon comes from the neck and shoulder of the pig, which means it’s meatier and more marbled than back bacon, with a slightly deeper, more complex flavour. It’s not quite as lean as back bacon and not as fatty as streaky — it sits somewhere in between, which, for a sandwich like this, makes it pretty much ideal. It cooks up with beautifully caramelised edges while staying tender and juicy in the middle, and it holds its own against bold ingredients like brie and spicy tomato sauce without disappearing.

If you can’t get your hands on collar bacon, back bacon is a perfectly good substitute. But if you do spot it at a butcher or a farmers’ market, I’d urge you to snap it up. It’s one of those ingredients that reminds you there’s a whole world of flavour beyond the supermarket aisle.

The Bread Makes the Sandwich

I said it in passing in the introduction, and I’m going to say it again here because I feel strongly about it: you cannot make a truly great sandwich without truly great bread. The bread is not a vessel. It is not a neutral backdrop. It is an active participant, and it needs to earn its place.

Sourdough is my choice for this sandwich and I’ll tell you exactly why. The slight tang of a proper sourdough cuts through the richness of the melted brie in a way that ordinary white bread simply can’t — it keeps each mouthful tasting fresh rather than heavy. The crumb, with all those lovely irregular holes and that slightly chewy texture, is sturdy enough to hold up to the tomato sauce without going soggy in the way a softer loaf would. And the crust, when toasted, gives you that satisfying crunch that tells you you’re in for something good before you’ve even taken a bite.

The sourdough I used was from Wylde Market, and it was genuinely excellent — the kind of loaf that makes you want to build an entire meal around it, which is essentially what I did. A good sourdough doesn’t need much: a bit of butter, maybe some good cheese, and you’re already somewhere very pleasant. Add collar bacon, brie, fresh tomato and spicy sauce, and you’re in a different league entirely.

If you’re baking your own sourdough, you’ll already know that the bread you pull from the oven on a Saturday morning is almost offensively good. If not, seek out a local bakery or a decent online supplier. This is one instance where the quality of a single ingredient really does make or break the finished dish.

Recipe-Ingredients & Method