Breakfast Pizza!

I got bored with the idea of a normal sausage and eggs breakfast for dinner, While digging for ideas I remembered an OLD recipe for Breakfast Pizza. My mom originally found this in the newspaper or a magazine back in the 1980s.

History aside, let’s answer the obvious question for some of you: What the heck is a breakfast pizza?

You use croissant roll dough for the crust, then pile on sausage, eggs, cheese and shredded potatoes, and bake. 🙂 The original recipe is pretty simple and designed to be thrown together quickly.

INGREDIENTS:

1 Pound of bulk pork sausage (I like Jimmy Dean sage sausage)

1 package of refrigerated crescent rolls (Pillsbury or similar)

1 cup frozen loose pack hash brown potatoes, thawed

1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese (8 ounces) – can use Monterey Jack, Swiss or a Blend)

5 Eggs

1/4 Cup of Milk

1/2 teaspoon of Salt

1/4 teaspoon of Pepper

2 Tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese (Parmigiano-Reggiano if you want to do it right. Trust me, there IS a difference)

PREPARATION:

In a skillet, cook sausage until browned, then drain off excess fat. I put the sausage on a plate with a couple of paper towels underneath it. 😉 Place the dough in an ungreased 12 inch pizza pan with points towards the center (see pic below). Press over bottom and up sides to make a crust. Make sure to seal perforations.

Note; I used a skillet since I didn’t have a pizza pan. A round casserole dish or similar should also work as long as it’s 12 inches in diameter. I also used cooking spray on the pan.

Spoon sausage over crust. Sprinkle with potatoes. Top with cheddar cheese (or cheese of choice). In a bowl, beat together eggs, salt, pepper and milk. Sprinkle Parmesan over all.

Finally, bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 to 30 minutes.

Aside from some small commentary, that’s the recipe verbatim from the original article. Here’s a couple of observations from my first time remaking this in decades:

1: Make sure that the hash browns are indeed thawed. If you add them frozen, they’ll be very mushy. In fact you may want to try partially cooking them first if you want a more crispy texture.

2: If you use pre-packaged crescent rolls or croissant dough, the “Grands” (large) size rolls will make a thicker crust. I prefer the regular size. My personal advice would be to stick with plain ones also. If you go with buttery flavor, etc… you’re going to have really greasy crust that tastes like pure butter. We did regular and it was still a bit too close to that for me. My next experiment will be using Phyllo dough instead. There are several options a creative cook can play around with here,including making croissant dough from scratch.

3: As with any recipe, you can always adjust the seasoning. The original is not much salt and pepper, but it’s easier to add later than to take away after too much has been added. I personally like about double the parm cheese in the recipe also. It would be easy to throw some bacon or turkey bacon in the mix also. As a final note, I used 6 eggs, not 5 with no adjustments to cooking time (done in 30 minutes).

Regardless of whether you do it the easy way above or get closer to cooking from scratch, this is a hearty, flavorful meal that should easily feed a family of four. It only took 2 slices to make me full.

You can see how thick the “crust” is with the “grands” size Pilsbury crescent rolls used.

A quick apology to those on the metric system also. The measurement conversions should be fairly easy for you to look up online though.

Buon Appetito! 🙂