Sausage Rolls – A Christmas Favourite

As we approach Christmas I am thinking of things that I can bake that are traditional at that time.  Sausage rolls certainly fit that bill.  Not large ones, rather, small almost two bite sized ones.  For mine I used a flaky pastry recipe from Delia Online.  These days many sausage rolls are made with puff pastry, and shop bought at that, which is not bad at all.  But I wanted something slightly different and wanted to make my own pastry.

Shortcrust pastry is also very good for these, but I do like flaky pastry, so that is what I wanted to do.

The recipe is very simple, with few ingredients, either for the pastry or for the sausage filling.  

I am very pleased with how mine turned out, they are so tasty, with sausage, onion and sage as the filling and the delicious, buttery pastry.

I urge you all to try these and then I am sure you will want to make some more for Christmas.  Once baked you can freeze the sausage rolls, provided you used fresh sausage meat(not frozen).  Then you just need to take them out of the freezer and allow them to defrost and pop them in the oven to reheat them.  So you can make them in advance of Christmas and have little to do to serve up a tasty treat.

I have a lot of recipes for Christmas baking, you can check out the category here

Ingredients:

• 110g plain flour
• 75g unsalted butter in a block, placed in freezer for 45 minutes
• 1-2 tbsp cold water
• pinch of salt.
• 225g high quality sausage meat(at least 80% pork)
• 1/2 an onion
• 2 heaped tsbp of sage leaves
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 egg lightly beaten to use as an egg wash

Method:

1. Place the flour into a large mixing bowl and toss the butter in it.
2. Then grate the butter into the flour, turning the block to stop the butter from melting on your fingers.
3. Using a small spatula or a table knife turn the flour and butter over until all is mixed together.
4. Add the tablespoon of water and continue to mix with the spatula.  
5. Use your hands to pull the dough together, using a little more water if necessary, until the side of the bowl is clean.
6. Place the dough into a plastic bag and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
7. In a mini chopper, or hand blender with chopping attachment finely chop the onion and sage together. If you dont have a gadget to do it you can finely chop each by hand and then mix together.
8. Preheat the oven to 220C/200C Fan/430F/Gas Mark 7
9. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper(I used two baking sheets)
10. In a bowl, using your hands mix the sausage meat and the onion and sage together until all combined.
11. Divide the sausage mixture into two and on a floured work surface gently work each half into a sausage of about 30cm/12 inches in length.  
12. Place on a piece of parchment paper until needed.
13. Remove the dough from the fridge and roll out, on a floured surface into a rectangle 30cmx20cm(12 inches x 8 inches.
14. Cut into two, lengthwise to have two 30cmx10cm rectangles.
15. For each  length of sausage place onto one rectangle.
16. Brush one long edge of the pastry dough with egg wash.
17. Take the other long edge and pull it over the sausage, continuing rolling the pastry onto the egg washed edge.
18. Turn the whole thing so that the exposed edge is on the bottom.
19. Take a sharp knife and cut the long sausage roll into 6 pieces.
20. Take a pair of scissors and snip each sausage roll in three place along the top.
21. Place the cut sausage rolls onto the baking sheet.
22. With a pastry brush wash each sausage roll with egg wash.
23. Bake in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until the pastry is a nice golden brown and the sausage meat is cooked through.
24. Remove from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool a little before serving.