Pigs in a Blanket

My son calls them bread sausage and he prefers this to regular sausage rolls. I put him and his friends to work while making this today. And they were in such a hurry to eat it right out of the oven. I barely got a chance to photograph them.

This is also called Chinese Hot dog, Hong Kong Sausage Rolls depending on where you are, the recipe and cooking methods are basically the same.

This is made using yeast dough and hot dogs as against our more popular short crust pastry and sausage meat sausage rolls.

A simple dip of ketchup and mayonnaise paired beautifully with this.

Recipe

Ingredients

2.5 cups all purpose flour (you’d need some more to powder the rolling board, about ¼ cup at least).
1.5 tsp yeast
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup milk
50g butter (Can be substituted with margarine or 1 tbsp of vegetable oil)
2 egg (one for dough, one for egg washing)
1/4 tsp salt
10 smoked sausages.

Procedure

Sift flour in a large bowl, add sugar, salt, and whisk together. Add the butter (or margarine) and rub into into the flour till it forms crumbs
*Check that your yeast is active. Sometime you buy packet yeast and you may not know it has been exposed and is now not as potent. To do this, add a 1/4 tsp sugar to your yeast, add 3 tbsp of warm water. Leave it for about 3 minutes. The yeast is expected to froth if it is still active, if it doesn’t froth like the foamy top on beer after leaving it for longer than 10 minutes, the yeast is not active
In another bowl, mix wet ingredients, one egg, milk water and whisk together
Make a hole in the centre of the dry ingredients and add yeast, the mixed wet ingredients to make a dough.You can use a mixer or mix by hand.
Transfer the dough onto a floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. Or keep mixing in your mixer until dough is stretchy and elastic.
Roll the dough up. Grease a bowl and place the dough in it. Cover and put in a warm place to rise until it doubled. I usually turn the oven on briefly to warm it up and turn off. Then I place the dough inside to rise, takes about an hour for the first rise.
When it has risen, deflate the dough and place on a floured surface.
Flour your rolling pin and flatten the dough to evenly.
Using a pizza cutter or a sharp knife, cut the dough into 10 even strips
Break the second egg and whisk. Coat the smoked sausages with egg
Wrap the strip around the sausage in a spiral motion. Pinch the tips together to seal
Place some parchment paper on a baking tray or grease and dust with some flour
Lay the rolled up sausages on the tray
Turn the oven on and set to 375 degrees. If your oven doesn’t come with a temperature gauge set the heat to about one notch below the highest.
Using a brush, egg wash the top of the rolls before you place the dough into the oven. Bake for about 35 minutes. About 20 minutes into the bake, you can pull the rolls out to give it one more egg wash. If you don’t want the top crust too dark, don’t egg wash.
Alternatives to egg wash. You can brush with milk or margarine.
You can pass a skewer through the roll to know if it is ready or tap the top to hear a hollow sound.
Once it is ready, take it out of the oven, remove from the pan and set on a wire rack to cool.