While watching my alma mater make it into the national championship I was enjoying a treat inspired by many a dinner in Case Hall: Spartan Sausage Bread. It is just regular sausage bread but prepared in a Michigan State cafeteria, or in this case, by a Michigan State fan and alumnus. I’d like to think my making this bread contributed in no small way to tonight’s win, so in the interest of the national championship I wanted to make sure everyone has the recipe for Monday.

Start with a Midwestern-American style pizza dough; I used Peter Reinhart’s from American Pie. Mix together:

• 11 1/4 oz flour
• 1 1/2 T honey
• 1 t salt
• 1 t instant yeast
• 1/8 c vegetable oil
• 1/2 c 2% milk
• 3 oz water

Stir/knead everything together for a few minutes. Allow to rest for five minutes and then knead another two. Divide into two equal balls, place in oiled bags, and refrigerate for as long as possible. You need to have them back on the counter and rising two hours before you want to bake them.

When the dough is ready, pat and roll it out into a large rectangle if you can manage it, but probably more like an oval.

Cover it with 1/2# of your favorite Italian sausage, browned, and shredded cheese (either your favorite cheese or whatever happened to be skulking in the back of your freezer).

At this point, it’s ready to roll. You might want to use a bench scraper to avoid tearing the dough as you roll it into a loaf. When you have done this with both dough balls, hopefully you intuited that you need to have a 375° oven roaring. 

Because this was the Final Four, I decided to get fancy and brush both loaves with egg wash then sprinkle them with salt before baking them for 40 minutes. They came out deep brown:

Now your excitement will be palpable, but they still need to cool. Luckily, a riveting first half kept me glued to the TV so that by the time half time rolled around, my delicious snack was ready.

Go Green! Go White!

1 comment | Basketball, Bread, Cheese, Final Four, Michigan State, Pizza, Sausage, Spartans, Yeast

This entry was posted by Tom on Saturday, April 4th, 2009 at 8:38 pm and is filed under Bread, Food + Drink, Recipes. You can subscribe to responses to this entry via RSS.