‹ The Bakery 100 › Make it at home

The Bakery 100 · make it at home

Pork and fennel sausage rolls

1 hr 30 min, 40 min hands-on · 8 large rolls

Flaky pastry around a well-seasoned pork filling with fennel, apple and herbs, baked until the pastry shatters.

Save it and it opens in Chef Amazing with a timeline, mise en place, what you already have and a shopping list.

The real one

You need

• 2 sheets (about 640 g) all-butter puff pastry, cold
• 600 g pork mince, not too lean (20% fat)
• 1 tbsp fennel seeds, toasted and crushed
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 small apple, grated
• 40 g fresh breadcrumbs (1/2 cup)
• 2 tbsp chopped parsley
• 1 tsp chopped sage or thyme
• 1 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp black pepper
• Pinch of chili flakes
• 1 egg, beaten, and sesame or fennel seeds to finish

How to make it

1. Onion (8 min): Cook the onion in the oil over medium heat until soft and sweet, 6 to 8 minutes. Cool.
2. Filling (5 min): Mix the pork, fennel, onion, apple, breadcrumbs, herbs, salt, pepper and chili with your hands for a minute until sticky. Fry a teaspoon to taste and adjust the salt.
3. Fill (10 min): Cut each pastry sheet in half lengthwise. Pipe or lay a 3 cm thick log of filling along each strip, a third of the way in. Brush the far edge with egg, fold the pastry over and press to seal, seam underneath.
4. Chill and cut (20 min): Chill 15 minutes, then cut each log into 2 rolls. Score the tops in shallow diagonal lines, brush with egg and scatter seeds.
5. Bake (30 min): Bake at 200C (400F) on a lined tray for 30 to 35 minutes, until deep golden and puffed and the filling reaches 72C (160F). Cool 10 minutes.

Tips

• Cold pastry into a hot oven is what makes it flaky.
• Fatty pork keeps the filling juicy; lean mince turns dry.

Chef Amazing's own home version of sausage roll, in our words; not any bakery's recipe.