This dish, Strata, was my mom’s go to breakfast for Christmas Morning because she could pre-prep it the night before and only had to stick it in the oven Christmas morning.
Strata
Ingredients
- 8 eggs
- 1 pound of sausage cooked & crumbled
- 6 slices of bread crumbled into small pieces
- 2 cups of milk
- 1 tsp of salt
- 1 tsp of mustard
- 2 cups of shredded cheddar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350° F
- In a 9×13 pan, mix sausage, 1 cup of cheese and bread crumbs together.
- In a bowl, mix eggs, milk, salt and mustard together.
- Pour mixture over bread and sausage.
- Sprinkle the other cup of cheese to the top.
- Bake at 350 degrees F for 35 minutes.
- You can prepare this a day before and keep in fridge before baking.
Where did I get this recipe?
My mom and Aunt Jo.
There’s a dynamic here. See. These are 2 sisters of 7 kids, and they were best friends (still are). And strangely, they both got pregnant with their first kid at the same time in life. Hi. I’m my mom’s first kid. So I’ve spent my entire life being compared with my cousin.
These two women sometimes get cut throat about the mom competition, but in the most loving way imaginable.
And the Strata … well there are two versions of it as a result. It all came from my grandma’s recipe, but both girls had their own way of preparing it.
I’m not a traitor when I say I use my Aunt Jo’s recipe. It’s not that I don’t like my mom’s recipe, but it’s just that she can never remember it enough to give it to me. She does not have it written down anywhere. In fact, I think she sort of makes it up every time she makes it and has for the last 40 years. She has always made it on Christmas Eve, late at night, right before bed after wrapping gifts, putting together stockings… So on top of it, she makes it up in a mombie autopilot mode.
I think she uses butter. I think she uses an entire dozen eggs. And probably less cheese depending on what’s already in the fridge, but possibly more cheese because I think she throws in American Cheese if she doesn’t have much cheddar. But I don’t think she uses bread crumbs. She does usually make toast to go with it.
Like I said, she makes it on Christmas Eve late at night, so if she’s out of an ingredient and didn’t realize it, she makes do.
Now my Aunt Jo, on the other hand, is a super organized person and wrote hers down.
Substitute Ingredients
Really, you probably could substitute or add any breakfast concept to this you wanted, but it might not bake right if you add a lot of watery things like peppers. Though that sounds good.
But I think you could get away with bacon instead of sausage, but again, I don’t think that sounds as good either. I usually prefer bacon to sausage, but not in this case. It being a family recipe, part of my childhood nostalgia, I’m probably biased to the taste of the recipe as it is to want to change it up.
But if I look at other recipes, such as Grandma’s Anything Goes Strata, I realize literally anything goes including leafy greens, deli meat, English Muffins, Bagels or Sourdough. Pioneer Woman uses Gruyere Cheese & French Bread (like that’s some classy strata).
Step 1: Sausage
Cook and crumble the sausage.
Step 2: Mix it all up.
So you mix the sausage, the bread crumbs and 1/2 the cheese in a 9×13 pan. Then mix the eggs, milk, salt and mustard in a bowl, and dump / spread across the bread mixture in the 9×13 pan. Then sprinkle the rest of the cheese on top.
You can cover and put in the fridge over night if you want at this point.
Step 3: Bake.
Bake at 350° F for 35 minutes.
More Words for SEO Reasons
I’m not going to make you sit and read this part hence the heading, but I can talk endlessly about anything so here goes my attempt at Strata. Strangely, Strata is polish for “Loss.” It’s like I’m on the brink of finding symbolism in that, but I’m not quite there.
I don’t know if I could incorporate that into life even. Like I ask out a guy, he says no, and instead of saying, “Your loss,” I could say, “Your Strata,” but then I’d think of Christmas Breakfast and I don’t want to give a guy who turned me down MY Christmas breakfast.
Everyone thank Rank Math SEO and Google for that #ShowerThought
