This Reuben Bread loaf is filled with 1,000 Island dressing, corned beef, Swiss cheese and sauerkraut. It’s a baked loaf that can be cut into delicious reuben sandwich slices. This is a great appetizer, lunch or afternoon snack. And it’s a nice way to use up any corned beef leftovers too!
This reuben bread recipe was adapted from a 10-year-old Junior League cookbook – Come On In! Recipes from the Junior League of Jackson, MS (I’ve always LOVED the Jr. League cookbooks… I was in the San Diego league for a number of years, and the Junior Leaguers just know how to put together great recipe collections.) Anyway, I found this recipe to be quite interesting. It’s a braided yeast bread with all of the components to a Reuben sandwich tucked inside.
Ingredients Needed for making Reuben Bread:
- Active Dry Yeast: Always buy new yeast when making a yeast-based recipe. You want it to be fresh!
- Warm Water: Shoot for water that is between 100 and 110 degrees F. This is considered to be the perfect temperature for combining with yeast so it’s not too hot to “kill” the yeast.
- White Sugar: A little to help activate the yeast and a little to add to the dough.
- Bread Flour: This is the flour that works best for this recipe.
- Butter and Salt: Use unsalted butter so you can control the amount of salt in the dough.
- Thousand Island Dressing: Bottled 1000 Island dressing is just fine, but you can always make it homemade too.
- Corned Beef: Use deli corned beef. Leftovers may be used too.
- Swiss Cheese: Thin-sliced deli Swiss cheese is perfect.
- Sauerkraut: Canned or bottled sauerkraut is just fine.
- Egg White: Save the yolk to scramble into your eggs!
- Caraway Seeds: Look for these in the spice aisle of your market.
How to make Reuben Bread:
You’ll begin by making sure that the yeast is fresh and good, and you’ll know if that’s the case if the yeast gets bubbly when combined with a little sugar and warm water.
If you have a stand mixer, that’s the best way to prepare the dough. If you don’t have one then no worries! You can mix the dough by hand. You’ll combine the flour, sugar, salt and butter. Then you’ll mix in the dissolved yeast. Add more flour if the dough is wet. The kneading of the dough can be done with the dough hook on the stand mixer, or you can knead by hand.
Next the dough is rolled into a rectangle on a floured mat, and then the fillings are layered on down the middle. Cuts on the side of the dough allow you to wrap the dough over the fillings in a braided fashion.
After brushing with egg white and sprinkling caraway seeds on top, it’s ready for a quick rise and then baking.
Reuben Dipping Sauce Recipe:
There is 1000 Island Dressing built into the Reuben bread, but you can make a dipping sauce too, if you’d like. Combine 1/3 cup mayonnaise, 1 1/2 Tablespoons ketchup, 1 1/2 teaspoons horseradish, 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce and some salt and pepper.
Recipe Tips and Substitutions:
- Slice the bread while it’s warm and serve- just as you would serve up slices of a sub sandwich. The cheese will be all melted and oh-my-gosh good, and the dressing will drip out the sides acting as a delicious sauce.
- To make this recipe even easier, use Pillsbury French Loaf dough instead of making it homemade.
- Use a pizza cutter to cut the side strips of the dough.
- Make this a breakfast braid by substituting sausage crumbles for the corned beef, scrambled eggs for the sauerkraut and 1/4 cup maple syrup for the thousand island dressing (leave off the caraway seeds).
What to serve with Reuben Bread:
Serve your Reuben Bread with chips and your favorite soup. If you would like to keep the Irish theme going, it would be delicious served with corned beef and cabbage soup too.
Here are a few more recipes using leftover corned beef that you might like to try:
Reuben Bread
Ingredients
- 1 pacage active dry yeast
- 1 cup warm water (105°- 115°)
- 3 teaspoons granulated white sugar, divided
- 2¾ to 3 cups bread flour (+ extra for dusting the mat)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, at room temperature
- ⅔ cup bottled Thousand Island salad dressing
- 6 ounces corned beef, thinly sliced
- 4 ounces Swiss cheese, sliced or shredded
- ¾ cup canned or jarred sauerkraut, drained
- 1 large egg white, beaten
- caraway seeds
Instructions
- In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast and 1 teaspoon sugar in the warm water until bubbly, about 5 minutes
- Combine 2¾ cups flour, remaining sugar, salt and butter in a stand mixer. Add the dissolved yeast and beat, using the dough hook, to make a soft dough (scraping sides as needed). Add an additional ¼ cup flour if the dough is too wet. Knead with the dough hook for 4 minutes. Turn the dough out onto a floured mat.
- Roll out the dough to a 10×14 inch rectangle. Spoon the dressing down the center of the dough. Top with corned beef, cheese, and sauerkraut. Make cuts along sides of the dough, from the filling to the outer edge, at 1 inch intervals. Tuck the ends in first, then alternating sides, fold strips across filling.
- Carefully move the bread to a parchment lined baking sheet. Brush the dough with egg white and sprinkle with caraway seeds.
- Loosely cover the bread with a clean dishtowel and allow to rise for 30 to 45 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 400°F.
- Remove the dish towel, and bake 25 minutes, or until golden brown and cooked through, then slice and serve warm.
Notes
- If you don’t own a stand mixer, mix the dough by hand until all of the ingredients are well-incorporated, then turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead it well for 4 minutes or so.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
I have a recipe very similar to this one for “Reubenwich” in a family recipe book that has been passed down for generations. The only difference is we substitute Mozzarella cheese for Swiss and we sprinkle on celery seeds instead of caraway seeds. As an Irish-German, this is one of my favorite dishes.
Could you freeze these sandwiches ? Would they still be good ?
I’m not sure!
I have frozen them pre-bake and post-bake. The post-bake freeze turns out the best without messing up the texture too much.
Can pizza dough be substituted? I know I’d never be able to make the bread correctly.
You can certainly try it!
Just made this and it came out great. I substituted Polish grain mustard for the Thousand Island dressing, and it was spectacular.
Oh, forgot to mention from my experience if you don’t have a 4″ rolling pin like I do made for pizzas and you want to roll it out without moving it from place to place and your edges on your sheet pan interfere with the rolling then turn the pan over and work it on the bottom of the pan instead of the top. You can bake it that way and easier to cut too. I highly recommend you make more than one at time, at least two because one won’t last the dinner meal but you are missing out big time because it really tastes best the next day. The flavors, especially the caraway really penetrate then.
I don’t know about the junior league cookbook but I have been carting around for almost 40 years the magazine advertisement/clipping (pre-internet obviously) for the Fleischman’s Reuben Loaf. My precious recipe is tattered-torn and frayed from the many times I made it in years of yore. Got it out because my husband mentioned it the other day and am making it tonight. 40 years are telling as I could barely read it with my dimming eyesight. So I got on line and find everyone in the world with the recipe! Some made it sound like a new invention in 2006 (laugh) not hardly.
This was delicious..thank you for sharing!
Really great, I did your Reuben Bread today, with a homemade 1000island sauce. Instead of corned beef I put the rest of the roast beef in thin slices into the dough… aaahh… and NO caraway seeds! ;-))
Thanx for the recipe!
My family would simply go ballistic over your fantastic-looking recipe…the problem for me is that I CANNOT SEEM TO LOCATE THE CORNED BEEF here in the French/Swiss border area (near Geneva)…Would you or any of your kind readers know of a “boucherie/traiteur”…or specialty cold-cut boutique where I might purchase it…or online? We so miss Reubens…and yours looks superlative!
OMGosh I have corned beef in the crockpot right now! Just might have to make this! YUM!!!