Our weather has finally turned cool, by which I mean it got below 70. We hauled out the sweaters! During the hot months, D&D Wednesdays and table game Saturdays often included the pool, but this week the weather was great for a Pokemon Go walk, so I took the opportunity to bake something I wanted for the freezer and made a double batch of sausage rolls. Even though I used 3 packages of smoked sausage and 2 trays of Italian sausage – (for a total 5 pounds of meat) 4 players polished most of them off anyway – while my freezer still has no sausage rolls I am flattered. And a 2 hour Pokewalk was a good way to work them off.
Think of these as sophisticated pigs in blankets, and even easier to make; when I tried pigs in blankets as a kid I always had trouble with the crescent roll dough. It wouldn’t stay in squares and tore all over the place. Adult pastry is definitely an improvement!
3 ingredients, and if you are going to get serious about feeding yourself, these are good to have on hand:
- Puff pastry (cheap at Trader Joe’s) – get the kind in sheets, not the already shaped kind for vol au vents (that term is actually in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, believe it or not) – these need to thaw before you start, so take them out of the freezer a few hours prior. As an alternative, you can also use pie crust, which comes in rolled sheets. Like puff pastry, these are 2 to a package
- I use either Italian sausage just sliced out of the casing, or smoked sausage, depending on what is on sale
- An egg to glue your pastry together; beat this with a tsp of water in a little bowl.
Get your oven going to 400. Tear some parchment to match your baking sheets (parchment is the key to sanity in many recipes)
Roll out the crust on a floured surface – parchment or an old pillowcase you save for this purpose are great (I have flour sack dishtowels I bought in a set of 6); get it to 12 x 12 inches if you can, a bit tougher with the pie dough because it started round but A) it doesn’t have to be perfect and B) I believe in you. Don’t forget to coat your rolling pin with flour before you start. Cut the pastry into 3 strips. If using smoked sausage I like to brush the pastry with whole grain mustard; if using Italian sausage you can spread a little tomato paste or pizza sauce on it but that’s gilding the lily.
The Italian sausage you’ve removed from the casing can be rolled into a log about 1 inch in diameter and fit onto the long pastry. Roll it up and glue it shut with the egg white. The smoked sausage is a bit tougher to handle because it is curved, but chop it up to handle the curve and fit it onto the pie dough. Egg glue it down.
Slice the logs into 2 inch sections and put them on a baking sheet lined with parchment (you can shake off the flour from your rolling parchment and use it again; this stuff is pure genius). Cut a slit in each one with a sharp knife or better yet kitchen scissors. Egg wash again to shine the pastry. That’s it!
Okay, you should bake it too. 20 minutes should do it, and you should rotate the baking sheets halfway through. Serve these warm or room temp with mustard on the side and pickles if you want to feel like you are in an English pub, and beer wherever you are – even non-alcoholic beer is a good flavor to set these off. These freeze great and are also portable and wok for breakfast. Though at breakfast you should skip the beer.
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