Cook pork long and hot enough that the strands brown and the meat dries as it shreds, and you have the Touraine style, the regional benchmark the looser kind is judged against. Rillettes de Tours run darker, drier, and more distinctly fibrous than the pale, loose pork default: less of a soft smear and more a mass of caramelized threads bound by just enough fat to hold. The build is a crusted baguette, split, a thick layer of the Tours-style rillettes worked along the crumb, and little else, so the browned pork is what you taste.
The logic follows from the dryness and the colour. Because the meat is cooked further, the paste carries less free fat and more concentrated, roasted-tasting strand, so it sits drier in the mouth and reads savory rather than unctuous. That changes the build. A drier rillettes does not slick the crumb the way a fatty one does, so a thin film of butter is welcome here where the looser pork version refuses it, bridging the dry shred to the crust. The flavor is still salty and deep, so the counterweight stays sharp, cornichons or strong mustard against the richness. The bread has to have a real crust because the filling brings no structure of its own, and the spread eats best at room temperature, where the residual fat softens and the dry strands turn supple again rather than chalky.
Variations stay on the Touraine pork shelf. A darker, longer-cooked pack reads drier and more caramelized still; a slightly fattier one moves it back toward the loose default; a thread of butter or a leaf of frisée steadies a particularly dry batch. Each holds the browned, shredded Tours style as the fixed point and adjusts only how dry it runs or what sharpens it. The Sandwich Rillettes de Tours belongs with the cured-meat sandwiches the catalog groups under Sandwich Saucisson & Charcuterie, the tradition that runs across France's regional curing shelves. Its specific contribution is the drier, darker, more shredded benchmark of pork rillettes, the regional standard the looser kind is measured against.