This is a cheesy, savory, custardy breakfast, assembled the night before and cooked in the morning for about an hour. Like a quiche, a strata has a lot of room for variation.
The short version is, make six layers in a big pan: day-old bread cubes, cooked meat and veggies, cheese, repeat. Cover with custard, soak overnight, and bake covered for about an hour at 350°F, uncovering halfway through.
Prep time 20 minutes. 2-10 hours fridge time, 55 minutes cook time, 10 minutes rest time.
Ingredients
- butter or oil for greasing a baking dish
- 8 cups cubed day-old bread (French, sourdough, or sandwich bread)
- 1 pound meat (I use sausage, but ham and bacon are also good)
- diced vegetables (I like 1 small onion, 1 sweet bell pepper, and a couple jalapeños)
- 2 cups shredded cheese (cheddar, or your choice. Bold flavor is good here, and you want something that melts and toasts)
- 8 large eggs
- 2 ½ cups milk (whole milk, ideally)
- ½ cup heavy cream (or just more milk is fine)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- ½ teaspoon dry mustard (or maybe garlic powder? you can be creative)
- a pinch of nutmeg
- fresh parsley or chives for garnish (if you like)
Directions
- Set out the eggs and milk to come to room temperature.
- Grease a 9×13 baking dish.
- Dice your vegetables. If you work quickly and want to multitask, you could combine this with the next two steps.
- Cook your meat, crumbling it.
- When it is nearly done, mix in and saute the vegetables, starting with the most resilient (e.g. onion or mushroom) and ending with anything that burns easily (e.g. minced garlic). Soften the vegetables, stirring them in over medium-low heat. If your meat is not very fatty, like ham, maybe add a little oil (or remove fat if e.g. bacon makes too much).
- When the meat is cooked and the veggies are softened, remove the pan from the heat.
- While that cools a bit, spread half of the cubed bread into the bottom of the pan.
- Spread half of the meat and veggie mixture on top of the bread cubes.
- Spread half of the shredded cheese on top of that.
- Repeat with more layers: the rest of the bread, the rest of the meat/veggies, and the rest of the cheese.
- Prepare a custard: scramble together in a bowl all the eggs, milk, heavy cream, and all the seasonings (salt, pepper, mustard powder, nutmeg, etc). The mixture should be homogeneous.
- Gently pour the custard over everything. Compress the filling with a spatula so it all gets soaked in the custard.
- Cover tightly with foil and refrigerate at least two hours, or ideally overnight.
- In the morning, bake at 350°F for 30 minutes, then remove the foil and bake an additional 25 minutes.
- Let it rest about 10 minutes to firm up, then it can be served. A green garnish like parsley or chives dresses it up a little.
Notes
- You can just use 3 cups of whole milk if you don’t have heavy cream.
- Since the bulk of the dish is custard and bread, crumbly or fresh bread will lead to a loose end result that is hard to serve.
- You can be very creative with the meat, veggies, and seasonings. Chorizo and cumin? Mushrooms and onions? Italian sausage, feta, and spinach? Have fun.
- Troubleshooting: if the result is too wet, increase cooking time. If it’s dry or rubbery, decrease the temperature or time.
- The target safe internal temperature is 160°F. Egg dishes should only sit out for a maximum of 2 hours.
- Adapted from a couple web retellings of Gordon Ramsay’s breakfast strata. I think recipe sites sometimes just put his name on things.