Sausage roll, homemade sausages, puff pastry, tomato sauce

For my sausage these are the meats that I had on hand so these are the meats that I used. I also have bacon, bacon fat and duck fat. 

It is the end of the season and I am long on herbs. These are all from the terrace, mint, cilantro, basil and parsley. 

My own sourdough pieces baked to dryness like commercial panko.

Sauce: 

Tin of San Marzano tomatoes

olive oil

Onion

Garlic

Bay leaf

chile flakes

wine

Heat olive oil, cook onion and garlic. When done and at risk of burning pour some tomato sauce or a single tomato into the pan and allow it to singe and spatter and burn onto areas of the pot even while it protects the garlic and onion from further burning as the mass turns to thick sludge. 

Clear it off with wine.

Dump in the tin of tomatoes without breaking them up.

Refrigerator or freezer is rearranged to accommodate a baking tray flatly.

The dough is yeast dough with baking soda to change the ph and salt but no butter this time. 

A sheet of butter 2/3 the size of the sheet pan is created by melting one stick of butter in the microwave to liquid. A sheet of plasticine wrap covers a baking tray for ease of butter-sheet removal and the tray is set inside the freezer or refrigerator.

Melted butter is poured over the frozen metal tray and plastic to 2/3 the size of the tray. The tray is so cold the butter begins to slow and thicken immediately. It needn't be poured all at once. The butter slab can be created in multiple pours much like dipping a candle. Finally a usable sheet of butter is created that is cold enough to be lifted from its tray by the plastic and set on cold yeast dough rolled flatly to the full size of its own tray. The edges of the plastic are used to lift the sheet of frozen butter and flip it onto the cold dough rolled out the full size of the baking tray, The frozen butter slab arranged on top of the rolled dough so that 1/3 of the dough is uncovered. The plastic pulled off. That naked third is folded over the center buttered third (and presenting an unbuttered top). Then the end butter third is folded over the whole thing. Boom. Three layers of flake with two lawyers of butter just like that.

Chill.

Roll out to the size of the tray. Fold in thirds. 

Roll out to the size of the tray. Fold in thirds.

That déjà vu thing is happening again, really hard this time.

Chill.

Roll out to the size of the tray. Fold in thirds.

I had a hard time deciding what type of dough to use. I prefer something easy, and I'm glad I decided on puff pastry. Puff pastry is the way to go. 

This form of puff is how croissants are made. Again, it is a plain yeast dough, not a short dough like regular puff. The plain yeast dough would have been fine by itself without all that extra butter for flake pastry and puff pastry, like a hotdog bun around a sausage. That is what the refrigerator dough is like. (I presume, I never ate one) A short dough like a flaky pie crust dough would work too just as well. Especially if folded in layers. All of them are used.

But, of the choices, puff pastry is quite incredible. It makes the whole thing fun to eat. Flakes all over the place.

Americans have their pigs in a blanket, usually a hotdog rolled into refrigerator dinner roll dough that comes in a tube that you hit firmly and resolutely on a table edge causing the unique packaging, weaker along a spiral, to explode open, as the whole thing is under pressure especially if the cylinder has been sitting around at room temperature.  It is the most fun thing about the refrigerator doughs that come in a tube, or one of the most terrifying things about them. It's all fun and games until someone puts an eye out. 

The hotdog rolled in refrigerator dough has an hor d'oeuvres version made of miniature franks that come in a jar or a tin and the same refrigerator dough. These are often the top item in a person's repertoire for hor d'oeuvres for entertaining or for satisfying a pot luck requirement, and that top position is reinforced when their family and friends and coworkers tell them how delicious they are. 

But see the carelessness in choice of ingredients there? 

The original idea was careless: sausage in dough. Hastily constructed from convenient ingredients and served in pubs.

The idea is hardly unique. Corn dog. Chinese sausage buns. Egg rolls. Pierogi. Ravioli.  

This is Gordon Ramsey on a panel of judges for Masterchefs remarking on this gentleman's sausage roll.