Vienna Sausage Recall 2023

No 1: Those in the front row have left, some even before the spuds are cooked.

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On a bright and sunny winter morning, the fat ladies came as promised for another round of Vienna sausage rolls.

A new team of American pastry chefs led by Alan Young is working overtime to provide good food and entertainment every day. Today was no exception.

Our harridan of an executive chef stood at the front window, flipping through cookbooks stacked against the wall and addressing any and all visitors who should be paying attention. She noted that the more expensive ones would need volunteers to make doughs and transform brown bread into sausage with wine sauce. She opened a different cookbook titled “Small Stuffed Pizza Cheese Rolls” that featured beautifully sized individual stuffed rolls. Her entourage of helpers rolled out large rectangular sheets of brown bread dough, smoothed it, then sprinkled egg wash over top so that we had something edible when we nibbled on the contents. A few moments later, our harridan marched back toward the kitchens where everyone else was already busy stirring hot browned pepper mix into an orange paste.

Once again, Alan Young was the spokesperson for our roll-out. “I’m here to show you how to roll these nice long, thin tubes of dough right the way they’re supposed to be rolled or stretched,” he said. We decided to give him time to do just that. “Here’s the thing,” he soon added. “If you haven’t used either method, please excuse the mess. It’s simply not the way the cheese rolls are supposed to be made.” As it turned out, lots of people didn’t know how to roll or stretch dough because the cookbook was full of extra steps and confusing explanations. They weren’t exactly making the proper amount of cheese, for example, and ended up with much of the gluten in the bread sticking to them anyway. For less experienced people, their flour cakes and rolls might not resemble the picture on the box, and would be unappetizing besides.

The end result was not only dry, but lacking flavor due to additives, and with a very different texture than the baguette or cracker varieties. The best way to describe it?