Roti Bakar: Southeast Asia’s Toast Sandwiches

When I hear the word “roti” I have specific expectations. It makes me think of the unleavened flatbreads of the Indian subcontinent–chapati, paratha, all the regional variants and descendent forms that have followed South Asian populations across the globe–the butter roti of South Africa, stuffed roti chaud of Mauritius, the bara and “buss up shut” and dhalpuri rotis of Trinidad and other versions around the Caribbean and South America (though in Suriname, a former Dutch colony, the word “roti” refers to the entire dish including sauce, not just the flatbread). The Hindi word “roti” derives from the Sanskrit word roṭikā, for bread, and does in fact refer to more than just unleavened flatbread. It can be, and is, used to describe just about any type of bread.

This is especially true in Southeast Asia, where roti is a generic name for bread–see the Roti John we covered a few years ago–“roti” for bread, and “John” for white guy, it is a type of sandwich street food vendors developed to appeal to the British palate. This month we’re covering Roti Bakar–“bakar” means burnt, or cooked over fire, so the name of the sandwich means “burnt bread” or “toast.” It is a popular breakfast and dessert throughout Malaysia and Indonesia. Served at the kopitiams of Malaysia, the most popular version there appears to be the kaya toast we wrote about last year.

Indonesian roti bakar appears far more variable though. Street food stands there, featuring an array of ingredients that would not look out of place in an American ice cream shop, use small loaves of bread sliced horizontally to build their roti bakars, which appear massive for a single-serving treat.

To source the most authentic ingredients I could, and to try and learn more about roti bakar in general, I visited the nearest Indonesian market I could find, Waroeng in Northwest suburban Schaumburg. According to a 2021 article from the Chicago Reader, it is the “first and only Indonesian grocery” in the Midwest. The shop owner, pictured in the Reader article, also runs an Indonesian restaurant in the Loop’s Revival Food Hall during the lunch shift on weekdays. They are open there from 11-3 Monday through Friday, after which she drives back out to Schaumburg and runs the market from 4-8. It seems like a pretty hectic schedule to me, but she was bright and cheerful and as helpful as could be when I asked about roti bakar.

First, she said, I would need the right margarine

More importantly, I would need the right chocolate sprinkles. Indonesians, it seems, are sticklers for their sprinkles, and the brand I bought at the market was very high quality. Indonesia during colonial times was known as the Dutch East Indies, and these sprinkles were good, made of actual chocolate and not simply sugar and brown food coloring, reminiscent of Dutch Hagelslag.

Any old white bread–called roti tawar in Indonesian–would do for this sandwich, but as for the cheese–she told me they usually just used Kraft.

So for my first attempt at the roti bakar, I used chocolate sprinkles with Kraft white American and Indonesian margarine, grilled to a crisp golden brown in my cast iron griddle.

Clearly I went a little light on the sprinkles–I was honestly unsure about the combination of chocolate and cheese to begin. I should not have been. Cheese is paired with sweet pastries quite often–the cheese Danish, the brie en croute drizzled with honey and jam, the slice of cheddar softening atop a warm piece of apple pie. Chocolate and Cheese specifically though is more than just a Ween album; it is a classic pairing, the bittersweetness of a dark chocolate in particular–such as the kind used in these high quality Indonesian sprinkles–can be a terrific complement to the creamy, savory flavor of a good cheese, and vice versa. There are guides for pairing chocolates and cheeses; Colombians add soft cheese to their mugs of spiced hot chocolate; much like caramel and sea salt, the combination of chocolate and cheese should not be controversial. Yet it seemed strange to me going in.

Consider me a convert. American cheese is simple and salty with a little of the sharp, savory character that defines cheddar but a lot of smooth, waxy, melty texture that happens to line right up with chocolate’s MO. I had made the mistake of refrigerating the sprinkles, which can cause “fat bloom,” where some of the fat content of the chocolate separates and turns white and powdery. The chocolate reintegrates once it melts though, and blends seamlessly with the American cheese. It is not an overwhelmingly sweet, candy-like chocolate, but the sweetness is there, as is the savory cheese flavor and the distinctively aromatic margarine. I used Japanese shokupan bread for this first batch of sandwiches, and it crisped up nicely in the pan while providing a sturdy yet pillowy surface for the ingredients. I should have used about two or three times as much of the sprinkles, but this was a good start.

The next one was a little stranger. I found this recipe online while researching this sandwich and was intrigued enough to try it: roti bakar with nutella, banana, and cheese.

The same essential elements were here–the savory, melty American cheese against the bittersweet chocolatiness of the nutella. Somehow though the balance had changed. Was it the ripe, sweet banana, its cellular structure disintegrating as it was heated inside the sandwich? Was it the nutty, buttery hazelnut of the Nutella? Or was the distinction between sweet and savory simply sharper in this sandwich, with these flavors? Somehow this sandwich didn’t seem to know what it was, and neither did I in that moment. Was it sweet or savory? The other sandwich could be both at once, but somehow that chameleonic nature eluded this sandwich.

Many of the videos of roti bakar street stands that I watched, and the ones with home cooks making them as well, showed the sandwiches being finished with sweetened condensed milk. I tried this one with peanut butter, chocolate sprinkles, cheese, and Borden’s Eagle brand sweetened condensed milk, once again on margarine-spread shokupan, grilled in a pan.

Here the savory side of things was boosted by the peanut butter, while the sweeter half was made much stronger by the addition of the sweetened condensed milk. The battle of flavors was more intense and yet, once again they came together harmoniously. Peanut butter of course is a natural with sweet flavors and itself can be somewhat sweet, though I still think of peanut butter as primarily a savory ingredient. Once again, we have melting chocolate and cheese blending together, this time with the additional layers of the peanut butter and Borden’s.

There was more going on here, yes, but it seemed less messy, more unified than the banana sandwich had been. Perhaps the issue with that sandwich was mostly textural. In any case most of these sandwiches were quite enjoyable, and even the one with bananas was more confusing than actually bad.

There is a bewildering array of ingredients that can go into a roti bakar though–yes the sprinkles, the cheese–though many street stands and even home Youtubers are using a stretchy white cheese like mozzarella rather than the waxier American cheese, great piles of it, shredded finely–the peanut butter, the sweetened condensed milk, these are all contenders. In the course of my half-ass research I’ve seen boxes of crushed oreos, various fruits and nuts; I’ve seen savory versions made with halal hot dogs, vegetables, eggs, seemingly inadvisable amounts of oregano and other dried herbs.

One of the stranger ingredients I saw was something that appeared to be a bright pink chocolate. I rewound and watched again–it certainly seemed as if they’d said coklat. This was new to me, and I must admit I still don’t have a solid handle on it. In Indonesia, there is a candy maker that has added rosella flowers to chocolate. Around the same time, a Western chocolate maker has begun developing chocolate from Ruby cacao beans. Both of these kinds of chocolate are “naturally” pink. I don’t know if either of them were what I saw in my roti bakar research. However, one of them was available at a Whole Foods near me.

This chocolate is oddly fruity, ever so slightly tart where a darker chocolate would be bitter, an interesting thing to try but not something that will replace that high-cacao kick in the teeth as my drug of choice. But toasted in a sandwich with some shredded mozzarella…

Mozzarella, while still at base having a savory character, is not as aggressively salty as some other cheeses, making it a better match for the milder, fruitier flavor of this chocolate. It might be the best of the pairings so far, and I’m glad because I don’t know what else I will do with this chocolate.

Maybe I should make a pizza out of it.

@sandwichidiot Roti Bakar #rotibakar #toast #sandwichtribunal ♬ original sound – Jim Behymer