School Lunch Pigs in a Blanket

Ingredients

• 5 cups AP flour
• 2 cups warm water
• 0.25 cups white sugar
• 1.5T active dry yeast
• 1T salt
• 2T oil + more for hands
• 12-16 sausages/hot dogs

Process

Whisk together sugar, water, and yeast. Bloom for 5-10 minutes. Whisk together flour and salt. Add 2T of oil to wet mixture, whisk, then add flour and stir with a wooden spoon. Cover hands in oil and knead dough for around 5 minutes until very stretchy and sticky. Let rest for 5 minutes.

Portion and wrap sausages/dogs. It should be possible to stretch and flatten the dough by hand—no need for rolling pin. Let rise for 20ish minutes, until approximately doubled, then bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown and delicious.

Notes

This recipe is my attempt to recreate the pigs in a blanket they served for lunch at my elementary school. A lot of pigs in a blanket recipes call for puff pastry dough, croissant dough, or another high fat dough in that genre. Aside from the fact that I find this type of dough to be a bit rich when paired with sausages, it just isn’t what I ate growing up.

Instead, the pigs in a blanket I remember have a bready, yeast-risen, pizza-dough-like quality. The goal here is something almost calzone-esque on the outside, but that (thanks to to the sausage/hot dog) becomes almost dumpling gooey on the inside. I like to use Hebrew National all beef knockwurst (which most certainly is not what they fed us when I was growing up), but this recipe is more about dough than dog, so you do you.

For bonus points, serve with macaroni salad, baked beans, and a tiny carton of chocolate milk, or something like that. Now, as Mrs. Clifford used to say, less talking, more eating!