Sausage Roll Rosettes

This is a new recipe I made for our church breakfast last Sunday. I saw it in Cooking Light magazine.

Sausage Roll Rosettes

Ingredients:
1 (11 oz.) can refrigerated French bread dough
2 tbsp butter, melted
8 oz. sage flavored pork sausage, cooked and crumbled
¾ cup shredded Gruyère or mozzarella cheese
Cooking spray

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°.

Find lengthwise seam in dough. Beginning at seam, gently unroll dough into a rectangle on a lightly floured surface. Brush with butter, leaving a ½" border. Sprinkle sausage mixture evenly over dough, leaving a ½" border; top with cheese. Press toppings firmly into dough. Starting with a long side, roll dough up, jelly-roll fashion; press seam to seal. Cut 1 (½" thick) crosswise slice from each end; discard. Slice roll crosswise into 12 (½" thick) pieces; arrange in a 13 x 9" baking dish coated with cooking spray.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden.

Makes 6 servings (serving size: 2 rolls)

Nutritional Information
Calories 312
Fat 17g
Sat. Fat 8g
Cholesterol 52mg
Sodium 640mg
Carbs 25g
Fiber 0g
Protein 16g
Calcium 146mg
Iron 2mg


These were a hit at the church breakfast. I served them with fruit salad. I made four batches. I baked them the night before, refrigerated them in a large bowl, then heated them up in a very low (170) oven during the worship service. They were nice and warm after church. (I covered the bowl with foil so that they didn't get any more brown.)

I only changed a few things from the original recipe. It called for fresh sage and salt to be added to the sausage. I skipped the sage and just bought sage-flavored sausage. I didn't think the sausage would need salt because sausage is usually pretty salty, and so is cheese, so I didn't see the need.

I couldn't find Gruyere at the little grocery store in our town, so I used an Italian blend that was pre-shredded. While it worked okay, it wasn't ideal. It had parmesan in it, which doesn't melt. It just kind of got brown instead. So I think next time I will use mozzarella instead.

Here are a few pics of the process:

Unrolling the dough. I did four of these, and some were easier than others. Make sure you keep the dough in the fridge until right before you unroll it, because it gets harder to separate it the warmer it gets. Just be gentle with it so that it doesn't tear. The original recipe said to roll it out to be 13" by 8", but I had a hard time with this and decided to just keep it the size and shape it was. That worked just fine.

Brush with butter and sprinkle on the sausage. I'm not really convinced the butter is necessary. Next time I might try it without and see if it makes a difference.


Sprinkle on the cheese. The recipe didn't say this, but I found it beneficial to press the sauage and cheese into the dough before rolling it up.

Roll it up. There were a few thin spots on this one because it was the first one I did, and the only one I tried to press out to the stated size. The thin spots were why I abandoned that idea.

Place in the pan. Make sure they have a bit of room because they will expand a little bit. Instead of 12 rolls, I got about 15 per batch.

This is what they look like coming out of the oven. You don't want to do more than 15 per batch.

I was really surprised when they came out looking like little roses! So pretty! When you cut the rolls, usually one side will be a little bit scrunched together from where the knife went through. If you don't correct that, they come out looking like this. Personally, I like them this way. (That's why I changed the name from "Savory Sausage Breakfast Rolls" to "Sausage Roll Rosettes"!)