Sausage Rolls - Grandma Ross

There's a lot of baking (and cooking for that matter) that my Grandma Ross did that my Mom never kept up with.  My Dad had objections to leaving the oven on overnight to make meringues, most of the rest I suspect was either more fiddly than she cared to deal with or that she just considered too unhealthy, "We don't need it," was her most common response - funny how we "don't need" a cream puff or yorkshire pudding but a double batch of chocolate chip cookies in the house wasn't subject to the same criteria.  Her refusal to carry on a lot of Grandma's recipes didn't stop her from waxing on about her mom's culinary repartee, the little quirks that made her versions different from others and how beautifully her results turned out.  If you listen to my Mom, her mom made the clearest broths, the whitest and dryest meringues, and the palest and most finely textured shortbread.
 
But Grandma, being Scottish, also did savoury baking which was not all that common in northern British Columbia, or at least not that I knew.  One of the recipes that I used to bug my Mom to make, that we "didn't need" was Grandma's sausage rolls, growing up I wasn't the biggest pastry fan (probably why it's such a nemesis now, curse you karma) but I did like sausage rolls, they were fantastic.  I think to my young palate the rich animal fat in a lard based pastry made sense taste-wise when paired with meat rather than with fruit.  I only distinctly remember my Mom making sausage rolls once in my life, and I'm going to accuse Mom of doing it this one time to use up some of Grandma's leftover pastry from the freezer, only because I remember asking what something was and being told it was sausage roll pastry and my Mom is waste adverse so she wouldn't have thrown it out.  But other than that it was Grandma's wrinkled fingers that I remember rolling the pastry around the sausages and making slash marks in the top to let the steam out.
 
Grandma's recipe makes a lot of pastry for a lot of sausage rolls, I used less than a quarter of the dough and it covered 4 large sausages.  I'm also realising that this whole not giving full information might be a trait of people from a generation that knew how to cook and bake very well.  Gram didn't list sausages in the ingredients nor did she mention how many sausage rolls this makes.  I know she used to use very thin sausages but I only had fat ones, if you use thin sausages you will get a higher pastry to sausage ratio which is quite decadent.

Sausage Rolls

Get your favourite pork sausages out of the package and if necessary cut into individual sausages.  Poke a few holes in each sausage casing so that the fat can drain out as they cook.  Put them in a pot of water and boil for about 20 minutes.  When they are cooked, drain then peel the casing off the sausage, discard the casing and set the sausage aside to cool.

Pre-heat the oven to 450^F (218^C)

Sift together in a roomy bowl
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt

Cut in
1/2 pound lard
I cut it really chunky because I wanted really flaky pastry, it still pulled all the flour together, it's a lot of fat.

Add and mix in
1 tbsp grated onion
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (Mom remembers Grandma used to use paprika when she didn't want it quite so spicy)

In a measuring cup mix together
1/2 cup cold water
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vinegar

Pour about 2/3 of the liquid into the flour and fat and mix with a fork, if you need more liquid you can add it but I didn't and actually needed to add a bit more flour (about 1/4 cup).

Roll the pastry out in strips and wrap around your pre-cooked sausages, trim away the excess if there is any and seal the long edge with some beaten egg, leave the ends open.  Feel for the gap between each sausage and cut between them to separate.

Roll the pastry so that the seam is on the bottom, brush the top of the pastry with some beaten egg and transfer to a baking tray.  Cut some slits in the top of the pastry.

Bake for about 12 - 15 minutes or until golden brown.