Cheesy Sausage Rolls
Bonfire Night in UK is a celebration connected to an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the King. Currently it focuses on bonfires and firework displays. Last year we went to the Lordship Recreation Ground to see the Alexandra Palace fireworks show and it was a brilliant sight (without the smoke and noise), so we decided to do it again this year.
One thing I remember really well was the fact that we were hungry, standing in the cold for an hour. We decided to fix it this year. Wondering what the best snack could be, I quickly googled “Bonfire Night treats” and hit the BBC Good Food service, where I could see a couple good ideas, but not necessarily in the “Stand outside and eat” range. The Cheesy Sausage Rolls were a spot on, they did however have a couple details that didn’t work well for me, so I decided to divert from it.
Firstly, the sausage. The recipe is simply begging for a proper smoked Polish sausage, so I nicked some from Gosia. Bigos will have to wait.
Secondly, bread mix. It might be a bit of a surprise to you, but I feel I have to confess I’m not an “any ready store-bought bread mix” type of a person. Since most types of bread dough we’re baking are quite moist and I feared it would get too sticky to get the rolls right, I looked for a low hydration recipe. I didn’t want to go into the sourdough bread range (for simplicity and consistency) and found that Jeffrey Hamelman’s cornmeal bread (in which I’m replacing cornmeal with corn flour which I happen to have) seemed the best with a 63% hydration. Also, I don’t know how much to make, so I will follow the recipe from the book, and if I get more dough than needed, I’ll either make rolls or a small bread.
Seems like we can plan the whole recipe now.
Time Planning
- Evening before 10 p.m. – make poolish (levain)
- The baking day 1 p.m. – mix the dough
- 1:45 p.m. – fold the dough
- 2:30 p.m. – shape rolls
- 3-3:30 p.m. – start baking
- 4 p.m. take out to cool down
Ingredients
Levain
- 230 g strong wheat flour
- 230 g water
- 1/8 of a teaspoon instant yeast (I calculated this to be 0.3 g)
Dough
- 450 g strong wheat flour
- 230 g corn flour
- 350 g water
- 20 g salt
- 5 g instant yeast
- 50 g extra virgin olive oil
- the levain made above
Rolls
- the dough made above
- some smoked Polish sausage (ca. 200 g); slice it (I made 5 mm thick slices and halved/quartered them); you can also fry some diced bacon instead
- some diced onion (didn’t have spring onion; not much anyway, we used 50 g)
- 150 g mature cheddar, grated (cheesy enough)
- 50 g melted garlic butter (I mixed melted butter with pressed garlic)
You’ll also need a butter-coated muffin tray.
Instructions
In the evening mix the levain and leave for 12-16 hours
When the levain is ready, add all ingredients to a bowl and mix it thoroughly with a dough hook. The recipe includes soaking the cornmeal in water for 15 minutes before adding the rest of ingredients, but we’re skipping it for obvious reasons
Leave the dough to ferment for 90 minutes, fold it after 45-60 minutes of fermentation
Flatten the dough out into a 30 x 50 cm rectangle (I find it utterly annoying that amount of a random bread mix is provided, but amount of the resulting dough is missing). We took 1 kg out of the 1.5 kg of dough and made rolls with the rest
Spread the melted garlic butter onto the dough and put sausage, onion and cheese on it. Roll up the dough
Cut the dough into 12 pieces (at least I’m doing so many to fit the tray) and place onto the tray
Rolls put into the tray Cover loosely with cling film and leave in the warm for 30-60 minutes (rather closer to 60, as Hamelman uses less yeast than an average bread mix has). In the meantime start an oven and set it to 200C/180C with a fan/gas 6 – this is the BBC recipe setting. Normally I would set the Hamelman’s 240C, or rather 220C fanless (know your oven), but now we have some stuff in the dough that the bread recipe did not consider.
Bake for 20-30 minutes, then cool down for 10 minutes and take out of the tray. Eat warm or cold.
We invited some friends to join us in the park, hopefully they can make it. We’ll also take a flask with tea and one with mulled wine. Off we go!