The Fastest and Coziest Way to Make Pigs in a Blanket
Peelable bread is appealing for its soft edges and collective approach to the pleasure of watching slices of bread break apart as you remove a selected piece from the group. Pigs in blankets are perfect with this structure, but even if you don’t want your presentation to sprawl, I have a sister wrapping method that will cut your prep time a lot: use crescent-shaped roll dough as a blanket than ever before.
Here’s how to do it: unroll the dough on a parchment-lined baking sheet and divide it into two strips along the perforations. Squeeze the diagonal perforations to seal them. If you bought one that is sold as a single sheet, firstly brava because I rarely find them in stores, and secondly, use a knife to cut it in half lengthwise, leaving you with two long rectangles.
Line up the piglets on the bottom edge. You can see nine dogs in the picture above, but later I squeezed a few more into each lane; 10 or 11 dogs will fit on the finished test with a gap of about half an inch between them. Now it’s time to make a decision: you can wrap the dogs completely in the dough, in which case you should place them so that they are inside the dough line. You can also leave the end of the mini sausage out of the blanket. Both cooking options have their merits: fully wrapped dogs are baked more tenderly and softer and retain the juices of the sausage, while gingerbread is slightly drier and chewier because it has been exposed. to the direct heat of the oven.
Starting in the middle, pull the far side of the dough up and over the pawls. (Cover them completely? You’ll have to stretch a bit.) If your dough is tearing from the perforations, squeeze and squeeze it back—it’s a forgiving thing. Then use a chopstick, your tiny little finger, or the point of a vegetable or butter knife to press the dough firmly between each sausage to hold the two layers together. Cut open this sealed area, but leave the folded end of the dough intact. (If the cookie were the cover of a book, you would call this side the spine.) Press and seal any edges that might come off.
You can stretch the pigs in the blankets a bit to make a long chain of extendable dogs that will fit on a rectangular sausage board. You can curl the dogs like a snail or zigzags. I made a classic wreath shape to serve with a small bowl of sauce in the middle. Whatever you choose, make sure the pawls are about ¼ inch apart so they have room to inflate while baking and still create a loose connection that is perfect for bread that can be torn off. Leave them plain, or sprinkle the dogs all over with bagel seasoning, garlic powder, or za’atar. Bake according to the directions on the dough package.
Even if you don’t want your dogs to be separated, this method is much faster than packing each dog individually. By reducing the procedure to three steps (lining up the dogs, pressing the dough, and cutting the dough), you will be done in no time. This method is especially worth trying if you are making a large batch of several dozen piglets. You will spend less time packing and more time snacking.