Sausage, Egg & Cheese Strata

I’ve made an observation – there are breakfast eaters and breakfast skippers. We all have that friend, or maybe its us, who simply cannot go about their day without eating breakfast first. I am definitely a breakfast skipper. Ask me to skip dinner and it’s virtually impossible, but breakfast? That’s an easy skip for me. When I do indulge in a good breakfast, it’s always on a weekend and it’s always gotta be really good. This Sausage, Egg & Cheese Strata is really – really – good. It’s definitely a weekend breakfast and requires a little extra effort, but is so worth it. It’s savory, satisfying and has all the components that make breakfast great – crusty bread, salty-sweet breakfast sausage, an eggy custard and creamy Gruyere cheese.

What is a strata?

A strata is a blanket term used to describe a layered casserole mainly consisting of eggs, bread and cheese. Of course there are a million variations of strata, and this one is my favorite.

I love making this Sausage, Egg & Cheese Strata when we have overnight guests staying with us. It can be assembled the night before and popped into the oven in the morning. Its great for feeding a crowd, and you don’t have to play short order cook for each person’s preferences.

Customizing this Sausage, Egg & Cheese Strata

Speaking of preferences, feel free to adjust some of the ingredients to suit yours. Mild Gruyere can be substituted for aged Gruyere. Pork sausage can be substituted for turkey sausage. You can even use bacon in place of the sausage altogether. Whatever floats your boat. That’s the fun part about breakfast casseroles like this – lots of different flavor combos work.

For the bread, go to your supermarket’s bakery section and buy an unsliced loaf of crusty bread – French or Italian. Then slice it down at home. Bread is always better when you slice it at home vs. buying it pre-sliced.

This Sausage, Egg & Cheese Strata pairs well with a fresh fruit salad and mimosas. Always mimosas. Enjoy!

Sausage, Egg & Cheese Strata

A savory breakfast casserole with mushrooms & aged Gruyere, smothered in eggy custard & baked to puffy perfection

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Prep Time 45 mins

Cook Time 1 hr

chilling 2 hrs

Total Time 3 hrs 45 mins

Course Breakfast, Main Course

Cuisine American

Servings 12

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• 10-12 slices French or Italian bread
• 3 tbsp. unsalted butter room temperature
• 8-10 links turkey breakfast sausage
• 1/3 cup minced shallots
• 8 oz. white button mushrooms cleaned, de-stemmed and cut into quarters
• 1/2 cup dry white wine Sauvignon Blanc works well
• 3 cups grated Gruyere cheese
• 6 eggs
• 2 cups half-and-half
• 2-3 tbsp. fresh flat leaf parsley roughly chopped

Instructions

 

• Preheat oven to 225 degrees. Arrange bread slices in a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake for 40 minutes. (You are just drying out the bread slices. You can skip this step if you have day-old bread.) Allow to cool and then butter each slice on one side with 2 tbsp of the butter.
• In a nonstick pan, cook sausage over medium heat, breaking it apart with a wooden spoon. Once sausage has begun to brown, add shallots. Saute sausage and shallots for one more minute, until shallots become translucent. Add mushrooms and cook an additional 3-4 minutes, until mushrooms are soft. Transfer to a bowl and season with salt and pepper.
• Add wine to the pan and raise the temperature to medium-high. Allow the wine to reduce slightly while scraping the browned bits from the bottom of the pan, 3-4 minutes. Remove from heat.
• In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs, half-and-half, reduced wine and parsley.
• Butter a 9×13 baking dish with the remaining 1 tbsp of butter. Arrange half of the bread slices along the bottom of the baking dish in a single layer. Sprinkle half of the sausage mixture and 1 cup of cheese evenly over the bread slices. Repeat with the rest of the bread, sausage and additional 1 cup of cheese. Pour the egg mixture evenly over the bread. Cover with plastic wrap, weigh down with another baking dish and refrigerate overnight (or at least several hours).
• When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove plastic wrap and sprinkle the 1 remaining cup of cheese over top. Bake for 55 minutes, or until edges start to pull away from the sides of the pan. Allow to cool 5 minutes before serving.

Keyword breakfast, brunch

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