Sausage.

You can use any type of sausage:  turkey, chicken, pork or beef.  These days, supermarkets sell ready made sausage meat without the casing in the meat section.  They come in all different flavors.  If you don't want to make your own sausage, this is definitely an option.  You can always add your own extra seasonings to the meat such as fennel (the distinctive taste in Italian sausage) or cayenne pepper chili for a bite.  Make sure you taste the chili before adding it into the meat!

If you are making your own sausage, use a coarse ground meat with a 80% lean:fat ratio.  If you have very lean ground meat in your freezer that does not have sufficient fat which helps make the sausage moist, add a teaspoon of olive oil.

My sausage recipe has a range of salt and garlic powder.  You can start with the minimum amount.  In order to test the taste of your sausage, take a teaspoon of the sausage and microwave if for about 20 seconds and taste it.  You can then add additional seasonings accordingly.  This avoids ruining an entire batch of sausage rolls. 

Technique.

Place your sausage in the center of your puff pastry.

Gently pull the edges of the puff pastry so that it more than covers half the sausage.

Place egg wash on the leftover puff pastry section and roll it over to close.  Press down to seal.

Brush the entire roll with egg wash before cutting so that you don't seal the sides of each roll to allow for the dough to expand.

Because some sausage may have more fat than others, I like to cut the tops of the sausage rolls so that the excess fat can escape.  I also place the rolls on a rack with holes so that the sausage rolls are not baking in the fat...just a little healthier!

Storing.

This recipe will make 12 rolls.  These are great to freeze and just pop them into the oven when needed.  To freeze the rolls, it is easier to place the long roll onto plastic wrap on a baking tray, brush egg wash onto the roll, cut and snip.  Place the tray into the freezer until the roll is frozen.  Once the roll is frozen, simply roll up the plastic wrap and store in the freezer.