Breakfast Sausage Rolls with Rough Puff Pastry. The girls and I were busy last week creating some goodies for the Macmillan coffee morning. We made some trial Halloween cookies and got thinking about something savoury. My eldest daughter makes a mean sausage roll, but I wanted to make something a little bit more special. No offence, Lilly! Inspired by the Great Sausage Roll Off, an annual competition to find the best sausage roll, I got to work.
Logging on to do some research, I wondered what if we did a super souped-up breakfast sausage roll? There are recipes online for sausage rolls with baked beans. Sausages wrapped in an omelette before being encased in pastry. But nothing quite like I had in mind. Do you know, reader, I think I might have invented something new. All of the things you love best about breakfast, served in buttery pastry. Sausage, bacon, egg and mushroom all in one easy-to-eat parcel of deliciousness.
While browsing, I discovered the UK bakery chain Greggs sells over one million of the pastry-wrapped minced pork parcels a day. Yes, a day! That’s mind-boggling. There has also been a charity number one record, ‘ I love sausage rolls ’, and a cartoon children’s book about you guessed it, sausage rolls. Rather patriotically, the sausage roll we know today with flaky pastry was first popularised in London during the Napoleonic wars.
What is Rough Puff Pastry?
Rough puff pastry is a halfway house between short crust and puff pastry. Ricer and with a flakier texture than shortcrust. But less time-consuming to prepare than short crust. Short-crust pastry is made using a mix of butter and shortening such as lard to produce a crumbly pastry that can be used in both sweet and savoury recipes. More butter in the recipe makes the pastry richer. More shortening with make the pastry crumblier but more difficult to handle.
Rough puff pastry combines the rich buttery taste and flakiness but not the preciseness of puff pastry. Puff pastry is labour intensive to achieve the perfect even layers of butter and dough. You will need to plan a little ahead to make the pastry ahead, but it is well worth it. My top tips are don’t overwork the dough which will toughen the pastry and to keep everything as chilled as possible. Don’t make the pastry in a hot kitchen if possible.
I am a big fan of breakfast, the most important meal of the day and have lots of tasty recipes, including fluffy American-style pancakes, crunchy homemade Granola and Mexican-style baked eggs.
Breakfast Sausage Rolls with Rough Puff Pastry
Use your butter straight from the fridge for the best results. If you have warm hands, a top tip is to hold them under the cold water tap for a couple of minutes and dry to help keep the mix cool. Chill the water for a good couple of hours in your fridge to make sure it is really cold.
Breakfast Sausage Rolls with Rough Puff Pastry
Ingredients
For the pastry
- 300 gr Plain Flour
- 225 gr cold Salted Butter
- 1 teaspoon Lemon Juice
- ¼ teaspoon Fine Salt
For the filling
- 300 gr good quality Sausages
- 3 free-range boiled Eggs peeled and roughly chopped
- 6 rashers Smoky Bacon cooked and cut into small pieces
- 150 gr Button Mushroom wiped clean and sliced
- 50 gr Salted Button
- Sea Salt and freshly ground Black Pepper
- 1 free-range Egg beaten with a splash of milk
Equipment
- Baking trays
Instructions
For the pastry
- Sieve the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl. Cut the butter into one-centimetre pieces cubes and rub it gently through the flour. This doesn’t have to total incorporated as you want some small butter pieces in the mix to help the flaking process.
- Mix 150 ml of ice-cold water with the lemon juice and slowly add to the flour and butter mixture. Use your hands to gently bring the ingredients together, but don’t overwork the dough.
- Tip the dough out on to a floured worktop and lightly roll out into a small rectangle. Brush off any excess flour and transfer onto a piece of baking paper. Cover and place in the fridge for twenty minutes to rest and chill.
- Place back on to the floured surface and roll the dough into a larger rectangle about a centimetre thick. Brush off any flour and divide into three. Fold the bottom third over to the middle and then cover with the top third.
- Turn the pastry by a quarter and roll out again and repeat the folding process. Cover and place in the fridge and rest for thirty minutes.
- Remove the pastry and repeat the rolling and folding process two more times the return to the fridge to rest.
For the filling
- Fry the mushroom in the butter, season generously and allow to cool. Finely chop the cooked mushrooms and place in a large bowl. Add the egg and bacon pieces.
- Remove the sausage meat from the skins and place in the bowl. Season and thoroughly combine using your hands.
- Preheat the oven to 350 F / 180 / Gas Mark 6. Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured board into a rectangle about half a centimetre thick.
- Brush with the egg wash and lay some of the sausage mix along the pastry. Cover the sausage meat with pastry and allow around two centimetres down the side to crimp with your finger or a fork.
- Continue until all the sausage mix is used up. Brush the finished sausage rolls with more egg mix and cut into equal sized pieces. Place onto baking trays and bake for thirty-five minutes until golden brown.
- Carefully remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before transferring to a cooling rack. When cool store in an airtight container in the fridge but they are best ate warm just after cooking.
Notes
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