A breakfast strata is just a breakfast casserole with layered ingredients.  It’s best when you assemble it the night before and refrigerate it overnight.  The next morning: pop it in the oven, take a shower, watch a little George Stephanopoulos* and then… wham, bam, thank you ma’am… breakfast is ready.

Think of a simple farmhouse breakfast of sausage, toast and cheesy eggs with onions and peppers.  Now, imagine what it would be like to have all those wonderful flavors mingled together in a single, delicious bite.  That’s a breakfast strata.

This recipe features one of the non-glamorous superstars of breakfast… day-old bread.  You probably already know that day-old bread makes the best French toast.  It’s a little dry so it retains its structure but it’s also thirsty to absorb the egg, milk and other good stuff that make up French toast.  It’s the key to French toast that’s firm but pleasantly moist inside.   The same principal works for a strata.  After we assemble our strata (which includes slices of bread), we drown it in a French toast-like egg and milk mixture.

This dish elicited enthusiastic comments from the people I tested it on.  My Italian friend Pete said, “Dude, this is great. Is it cool if I get some more?”  My wife Kellie said, “Tell me about this.  What’s in here? I’m gonna have another piece.”

Nobody is 100% sure who coined the the phrase “leave ‘em wanting more.” It was likely either Walt Disney or P.T. Barnum.  Whoever it was, let’s just assume they were talking about a good Breakfast Strata.

Let’s assemble a strata…

For the quick and easy, printable recipe, click here.

There’s only 7 ingredients:  French or Italian bread, eggs, milk, sausage, onion, bell pepper and cheese.  For the cheese, I used a Mexican blend of Monterey Jack, Cheddar, Queso Quesadilla and Asadero cheeses.  You could use Cheddar, Pepper Jack or almost any cheese or combination of cheeses.

The first step is to fry up a pound of sausage in a skillet over medium-high heat.  Crumble the sausage with a pair of forks as it cooks.  After 5 minutes, add a chopped onion and a chopped bell pepper and cook for about 7 more minutes – stirring often.  You know it’s ready when the vegetables are softened and there’s no pink visible in the sausage.

As the sausage cooks, prep a 7×11-inch backing dish by smearing the inside with softened butter.  Also, cut your day-old bread into 1/4-inch to 1/2-inch slices.  I used an entire loaf of French bread with just 2 slices left over to use for a sandwich later.

Place a layer of bread slices in the prepared baking dish.  As you can see in the picture, I laid down 6 slices of bread and then cut another slice in thirds so my layer of bread took up the whole surface of the dish.  Sprinkle half the sausage mixture over the bread, followed up by 1/3 of the cheese.

Repeat with another layer of bread, the remaining sausage and another 1/3 of the cheese.  Top that with a final layer of bread.  Pour a mixture of beaten eggs and milk over everything.  Top with the remaining cheese.

Place plastic wrap over the baking dish and refrigerate for 2 to 12 hours.

When you’re ready to bake, just remove the plastic wrap and place the strata in an oven preheated to 350 degrees.  Cook for 50 minutes to an hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out dry.  The strata seen above took 52 minutes.

Let it cool for about 10 minutes and then serve it up.

This strata also made great leftovers.  I refrigerated a couple pieces and had it for breakfast again the following day.  It was just as good (and possibly even better) than the day it came out of the oven.

This post is a companion piece to the following recipe on MrBreakfast.com:

Basic Sausage Breakfast Strata

If you’re curious about the oranges on the side, stay tuned.  I’ll have a post about that in the next couple of days.

* George Stephanopoulos is the co-anchor of ABC’s Good Morning America.  He is a small man at 5′ 6″.  When I said, “watch a little George Stephanopoulos,” I was referring to watching the morning show for a short period of time, not watching a random little man after you shower. Although, that’s the beauty of this recipe.  You can do whatever you want and breakfast will still be ready and waiting.

Store-bought frozen breakfast burritos are disgusting. Often times, you wouldn’t know what you were putting in your mouth if the package didn’t tell you.  If I asked you to describe most store-bought burritos, you would probably say, “Oh… it’s some vaguely breakfast-flavored amalgamous gloop plopped into too much tortilla.”  Your words.  Not mine.

This phenomenon baffles me.  The majority of non-supermarket breakfast burritos are excellent.  To recreate the store-bought experience, you’d need a blender and some kind of solvent that removes color.

Luckily, fantastic homemade breakfast burritos are exceptionally easy to make and they freeze amazingly well.  They taste and look 1,000 times better than their store-bought equivalent.  In this post, I’ll show you how I make 10 days worth of frozen breakfast burritos in less than 2 hours.  You may never buy a frozen breakfast burrito again.

When making a bunch of frozen burritos, most of the ingredients can be prepared hours before assembly.  The exception is the eggs.  If you let them set out too long, they get dry and lose their tenderness.  For my burritos, I fried up 2/3 pound of sausage, 10 strips of bacon and two big handfuls of tater tots.  Then, I grated 1 cup of Cheddar cheese and 3/4 cup Pepper Jack cheese and a diced one red bell pepper.  I used 14 eggs to make 10 burritos.  I like to mix my eggs and meats so the main ingredients are uniformly distributed in the burritos.

Lay out as many tortillas as you can on a table or on the counter and fill the burritos as you please.  I use large or burrito-size flour tortillas.  If you offset the mound of fillings to one side, you’ll find it easier to fold the burritos.

I filled some with bacon, some with sausage and some with both meats.  Same with the cheeses.  Anything goes.  It’s a free-for-all of variety!

Once filled, just fold, fold, fold and roll.  Wrapping a burrito is much like wrapping a present.  The image above shows the technique that I use.

To prevent freezer burn, I double wrap each burrito in plastic wrap.  If you create a wide variety, it’s a good idea to label each one.

How To Microwave Homemade Frozen Breakfast Burritos:

Do you remember 2012 presidential candidate Herman Cain?  He had a 9-9-9 plan to reform the U.S. tax code.  I have a 2-2-2 plan for heating frozen breakfast burritos.

Defrost for two minutes at 40% microwave power.

Flip the burrito and microwave on high for two minutes.

Let set two minutes.  2-2-2!

Here’s a sampling of how the burritos turned out.  Each one was heated days after they were frozen.

Sausage Potato Pepper Jack

Double Meat & Double Cheese

Bacon Potato Cheddar – For this one, I defrosted for 2 minutes, microwaved on high for 90 seconds and then topped with cheese and threw it under the broiler for 2 minutes.

Sausage Potato Cheddar

Bacon Potato Pepper Jack

More Homemade Frozen Breakfast Burrito Tips:

When preparing a lot of bacon at once, consider using the oven.  Just lay the strips out on a baking pan and bake at 425 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes until well-browned.  Place cooked bacon on stacked paper towels to remove excess grease.

I find that frozen tater tots work better than shredded hash browns.  Strangely, the tots taste more like hash browns that the hash browns do when everything is reheated. I think it’s because the tots have such a defined fried exterior. Each piece is like a wee-small serving of hash browns – crisp and tender in each bite.

I recommend NOT putting salsa in the burritos before freezing.  I find that it can make parts of the tortilla soggy after heating. However, I do keep a lot of salsa handy for serving.

Check out these recipes for breakfast burritos:

Basic Sausage Breakfast Burritos

Breakfast Tortilla Wraps

Low-Fat Breakfast Burrito

Taco Bell recently started testing a new breakfast product in 3 select outlets in California… The Waffle Taco.  I haven’t been able to try their version myself, but I’ve been fascinated by the product ever since I saw a photo circulating around the internet.  Unable to get my hands on the real deal, I decided to try making it at home.

Above, you can see the version I made.  Below, you can see Taco Bell’s version.

My advice on making homemade Waffle Tacos is this… don’t do it.  It’s a huge pain in the butt.  For home use, the Pancake Taco is much easier to make and just as tasty.

It sounds extraordinary easy:  Make a waffle, fry some sausage, scramble some eggs and throw it all together.  Not so fast.

The first problem was that my waffles kept breaking. (You can see the Waffle Taco Test Kitchen above.)  My first inclination was to use square waffles, but those weren’t big enough to hold the fillings.  Next, I went with a round waffle.  In the end, they worked pretty well.   The serving size was way too big, but I wasn’t complaining about that when I was eating it.  I solved the breaking waffle problem by using a spatula handle to help curve the waffle and ease the rip-pressure on the natural seam of the waffle.  Again, I’ll stress that pancakes are much better to work with.  They fold easily and you have absolute control over their size.

The next hurdle was the sausage.  To make it like Taco Bell does, the sausage patty had to be large, thin and flexible.  The thing with sausage is that it shrinks in the pan.  Make your patty about 50% larger than you think you’ll need and you should be alright.

The final obstacle was getting my Waffle Taco to stand up straight for photographs.  I tried making a homemade taco rack out of a wire hanger.  No go.  Waffle Tacos have more weight and girth than traditional tacos.  I finally settled on using part of an egg carton to support my creation.  And I eventually realized – as everyone will – the best holder for a Waffle Taco is the human hand.

Now that you know the road ahead, here’s directions to make your own Waffle Tacos:

1) Fry a large, thin sausage patty until browned and thoroughly cooked through.

2) Make some waffles. (I used a recipe for Quick and Crispy Waffles that I’ve had success with.)

3)  Scramble some eggs.  I used 2 eggs for each Waffle Taco.  (For tips on scrambling, here’s my go-to method.)

4) Place the sausage in the waffle, fold and top with scrambled eggs.

5) Drizzle with real maple syrup and dig in.

Now that you know how to make Waffle Tacos, forget everything you just read.  Pancake Tacos are so much easier.  Trust me.

Incidentally, Taco Bell’s official Waffle Taco is selling for only 89 cents.  Here’s hoping that it goes nationwide soon.

In school, we learn the 3 R’s – reading, writing and arithmetic.  I prefer the three P’s – personal, portable and pleasurable.  These are the chief characteristics of a hand pie.  In this article, we’ll bite into a savory Sausage, Egg & Cheese Breakfast Hand Pie with a flaky, buttery crust and a warm scrambled egg filling accentuated with Cheddar cheese.

Be advised:  This recipe is a bit time-consuming.  Making everything is extraordinarily easy, but you need to chill the dough before you roll it and chill the assembled pies before baking.  This adds a couple hours to the process.  Some people might not like that, but I found that it gave me time to take a shower, watch an episode of Mad Men and set up the lights to take these pictures.

I’m calling this article “Breakfast Hand Pie #1″ because I’m already excited to try other variations.  On the savory front, I’d like to do something with sausage and gravy.  Eating biscuits and gravy while driving seemed like an impossibility before today.  As for sweet varieties, the possibilities seem endless.  Berries, jams, peanut butter, chocolate, chopped nuts and Nutella will all get the hand pie treatment before I’m done.

But for now, let’s concentrate on the recipe at “hand”…

Making Sausage, Egg & Cheese Breakfast Hand Pies

For the short and sweet printable recipe, click here.

The ingredients in the crust are very simple: flour, sugar, salt, water and butter.  It’s amazing that these pantry staples come together to make such a great taste and texture.  Basically, you mix the flour, sugar and salt together and then cut in small cubes of butter until everything is coarse and crumbled.  You can use a food processor for this, but I prefer to use the best kitchen tool of all… the human fingers.

Gently pinch the butter into the flour mixture.  Look for a final consistency like granola or the crumb topping of a muffin.  As a rule, the largest piece of butter remaining should be no larger than a pea.  When you think you’re done cutting in the butter, keep blending for 30 more seconds.  It’s all about even distribution through the dough.

Next, mix the dough with a spatula while streaming in ice water.  The second a dough starts to form, stop with the water.  Ball up the dough.  Flatten it to a disk.  Wrap it in plastic and refrigerate for two hours.

The filling is Basic Breakfast 101.  Fry up some breakfast sausage over medium heat.  Crumble it with a wooden spatula as it cooks. Beat some eggs with a little milk.  When the sausage starts to brown, add the egg mixture to the pan.  Scramble up the eggs just until they begin to set. They should be ever-so-slightly under-done.  They’ll get a chance to finish off in the oven.

Assembling hand pies is actually quite fun. You just roll out the dough to about 1/8 inch and cut out as many disks as you can with a biscuit cutter.

When I turned out my chilled dough, I noticed a couple larger chunks of butter in it.  So, I ended up rolling the dough to a thin sheet, folding it over into itself a couple times and then rolling it once more.  For some recipes, this can be the kiss of death – creating cracks in the final product. For this recipe, double-rolling only seemed to make the pastry more flaky. Bonus!

Take half of the disks (the bottom of your pies) and brush some beaten egg around the edges.  Sprinkle some cheese in the middle and dollop on a heaping Tablespoon of filling. Top each of these with a corresponding top disk.  For the upper crust, you can roll or stretch each individual disk to make them the right size.

Crimp the edges of the assembled pies with a fork.  Use the biscuit cutter to cut around the crimped edges to make the pies uniformly round.

Place the pies on a parchment-lined baking sheet and refrigerate for 45 minutes.

When ready to bake, brush the top of each pie with beaten egg and cut a small slit so steam can escape. Bake for 16 to 20 minutes at 425 degrees until golden brown.  The hand pies pictured here took 18 minutes.

Let them cool about 5 minutes and dig it.  You can also refrigerate them to have homemade hot pockets the next morning.  About 35 seconds in the microwave warmed the filling just right.

Alright, you’ve got to “hand” it to me… that’s a lot of words about a fairly small pie.  If you try making your own hand pies, let me know.  Send a picture and I’ll put it on the site.

Goodbye for now.  Or should I say, good-pie!

This article is a companion piece to the following recipe on MrBreakfast.com:

Egg And Sausage Hand Pies

This is such a simple and fun concept, I’m surprised it’s not already wildly popular.  Basically, all you do is make tiny pancakes, chop some fruit and stab everything with a toothpick.  Any pancake batter will do.  I like to use a popular pancake recipe on MrBreakfast.com.  But you can just as easily use Aunt Jemima or another pancake mix.

I’ve seen a few examples on the internet of people using strawberries, bananas and apple slices, but I thought it’d be fun to take it a few steps further.

Make pancakes about the size of 50-cent pieces.  I’ve found that 2/3 Tablespoon batter per pancake gives you the right size.  In the picture above, the pancakes to the left were actually too large.  The ones on the right, as Goldilocks might say, were just right.  Be sure to have some maple syrup standing by as a dipping sauce.

The way my mind works, I immediately thought of bacon.

These baked apple pancake skewers were delicious.  I prepared the apples in the microwave with sugar, cinnamon and maple syrup.  Here’s the directions to make apple pancake topping in the microwave.

The strawberry pancake skewers were great.  The banana pancake skewers were terrific. But I can tell you, the strawberry and banana skewers surrounded by whipped cream were dynamite.

The bacon and sausage pancake skewers were a little unwieldy, but I mean… you can taste them with your eyes, right?  If I had a do-over with this one, I’d probably use small sausage patties instead of links.

This was the start of my hyper-experimental phase:  Baked Apple & Country Sausage Pancake Skewers.  There’s nothing particularly “country” about the sausage.  I just liked how it sounded in the name.

Towards the end of my Pancake Skewer Breakfast Party, I was going a little insane.  However, there was magic in my madness that resulted in the bacon and banana pancake skewer.

I’d dipped most of the other skewers in maple syrup.  For this one, I put some creamy peanut butter in the microwave for 20 seconds so it had more of a sauce-like consistency.  I liked it.  If he were alive today, I think Elvis Presley would have liked it too. (That’s a reference to the famous Elvis Presley Breakfast Sandwich.)

For as many pancake skewers as I made, I feel like I’ve just scratched the surface. The possibilities seem almost endless.  What about a ham skewer?  A pineapple skewer?  How about a ham and pineapple Hawaiian pancake skewer?   If you have an idea for a skewer, let me know in the comments section below.

Here’s wishing you a fun and successful Pancake Skewer Breakfast Party of your own!