Have you ever watched one of those cooking contest shows and wondered if the technical challenge could be accomplished with a whole lot less fuss? This was how I felt as I watched the contestants struggle to make the perfect sausage roll on the British Baking Show. It was a noble effort, but we are talking about a sausage roll after all. I'm not proud and I have no need to mince my own meat into sausage. We had some brats in the fridge and a package of puff pastry in the freezer. I made my own sausage roll and it wasn't half bad. There were tips from the show I will implement the next time around. The way I positioned the slices of the roll, above, left the underside of the dough undercooked. Either flip the whole thing halfway through, or twist each slice so that one side of the meat touches the baking sheet.
1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed for 2 hours at room temperature
1 lb sausage meat
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Unroll the puff pastry sheet onto the parchment and spread the cranberry sauce down the center of the long side in a stripe. Form the sausage meat into a roll and lay it on top of the cranberry. The meat roll should extend the full length of the dough.
Roll up the pastry so that you have a long tube of dough with meat in the center. Make cuts every couple of inches so that you have 7 or 8 slices. You can either cut all the way through and bake each slice separately or form a wreath shape just like the photo above, but twist each slice so one side of the meat touches the baking sheet and the sides of the dough are fully exposed to the heat of the oven.
Bake for 15 minutes or so until the meat is fully cooked and the puff pastry is golden brown. Serve hot.
