Sausage Rolls

Do your children like sausages? Mine does with a capital L. They l o v e sausages in their bread, in their pasta, in their eggs.

So anyway, this one (schooling) morning I woke up at 4am and couldn't go back to sleep. Tossing and turning in bed with my eyes big wide open, I was feeling rather miserable. Felt as though a headache is coming on if I remain horizontal. So I decided to get up and start my day.

Remembered I had a pack of sausages in my fridge and I set immediately to work. Mix and knead and shape and roll and bake. An hour of labour yielded these beautifully baked rolls.

Just in time, my dutiful alarm clock rang. Time to wake Man and Son1 up 'to watch the dawn with me'... LOL... I wish!

Time they begin their day!

Now, I can't wait to see them off so that I can go back to bed. *Yawn

Here's what you'd need:

* 1 1/2c warm water (warm enough for you to retrack your hand; mix 1c boiling water with 1/2 room temperature water)
* 2tbsp sugar
* 1tbsp yeast (I used 1 sachet of Active Dry Yeast)
* 1/2tsp salt
* 4 - 4 1/2c plain flour

This is what I did:

1. Pour the warm water into stand mixer bowl and preheat oven to 75degC (gas mark 1/2)

2. Into the same mixer bowl, add sugar and yeast.

3. With a dough hook, mix on low for about 30secs to combine ingredients. Let it rest for about 5mins or until it gets all bubbly.

4. Add in salt and 2c flour.

5. Turn on mixer on low and let the flour mix in. Slowly cup by cup, add in the rest of the flour. You have enough when the dough starts to pull away from the side of the bowl.

6. Turn the mixer on medium (KA speed 5) and mix for about 5-8mins. (Hold onto your dear mixer; it does its cha-cha!)

7. With the dough in the mixer bowl, cover it with a clingwrap to let the dough rest for about 5mins. The cling wrap helps to trap the heat in.

8. In the meantime, prepare your work top. Lightly dust the worktop with some flour.

9. Transfer the dough onto the worktop. And roughly divide the dough into smaller portions. I managed to get about 10 portions.

10. Roll each dough into a rough oval or rectangle.

11. Place a sausage into the middle of the oval (longitudinally).

12. Using a scraping knife or pizza cutter or any knife will do (no need to rush out to bakery shop to buy!) cut 6-7 wide strips along both long sides of the oval (to each side of the sausage).

13. Overlap the dough strips into the center of the sausage (liken wrapping the sausage dearly).

14. Beat an egg and brush it over the dough.

15. Repeat with the rest.

16. Let the shaped dough rest in the warm oven for about 20minutes (yes, at that 75degC).

17. Without taking the dough out of the oven, turn up the heat to 180degC and bake for 15-20mins till the bread are golden brown on top.

18. Remove from oven and brush some butter on the hot bread to give it that glossy look.

19. Let it cool and enjoy!