Breakfast Brewers Tailgate

So this past Sunday me and couple of friends decided to go to a Brewers tailgate sponsored by a local bar.  I had an idea that I would cook breakfast for my friends before we headed to the bar for our bloodys and beers.  I decided on making a strata from a recipe that my mom had shown me. This dish is really easy to make, but you have to keep in mind that the strata will have to set over night.  If you don't know, a strata is a combination of bread, sausage, and egg that is made the night before and baked in the morning.

So my recipe called for English muffins but if you prefer to use traditional bread, stick to a thick style white.  It will soak up the egg mixture better.  This dish allows you a lot of flexibility in ingredients that you want.  I used breakfast sausage, bacon, yellow bell pepper, mushrooms, cheddar and mozzarella cheese.  But feel free to experiment with different combinations, its part of the fun of cooking.

You will need:

2 pkgs. of 12 oz breakfast sausage
6 English muffins, cut into 1 in cubes
1/4 cup butter melted
6 oz. cheddar cheese, shredded
6 oz. mozzarella cheese, shredded
1/4 cup yellow bell pepper, chopped
6 oz of mushrooms, sliced
12 large eggs
2 cups of milk
1/4 tsp. salt
8 oz. bacon
*You can use whatever color bell pepper you like, it just so happened yellow bells were on sale.  Red bell peppers however give this dish nice color though.

So start by cooking your breakfast sausages and bacon either in the microwave or on the stove top.  While those are cooking you can prepare your English muffins.  Start my cutting your 6 muffins in to 1 in. cubes.  Once that is done, grease a 9x13 baking pan and spread half of your muffin cubes throughout the pan.  Once your sausages and bacon are done cooking, begin to cut the sausage into 1/4 in. slices.  Spread half of the sausage along side the English muffins.  Crumble the now cooked bacon and sprinkle about half (4 oz) on top of the muffins and sausage.  I like to next cut up my mushrooms, bell pepper and spread those throughout the pan as well.  Top this first layer with 3 oz. of both the cheddar and mozzarella cheese.

So that is layer one, and repeat the same process with the remaining muffin cubes and sausage.  Topping the second layer off with the rest of your cheese and bacon.  Then drizzle 1/4 cup of melted butter over the pan.  After that is assembled crack 12 eggs and mix with 2 cups of milk.  Season this mixture with salt and pepper if you prefer.  After the egg mixture is thoroughly beaten pour it over the strata.
Congrats you just prepared your delicious breakfast strata.  Now the hard part..... Waiting!

Cover the strata and refrigerate until morning.  When your ready to bake the strata remove it from the fridge 30 minutes before it goes into the 350F preheated oven.  Bake for 30-45minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.  Let the it stand for 5 minutes and enjoy.

This truly was a great dish so I hope you try it out and maybe even experiment with your ingredients.  I just wish the Brewer game would had turned out as awesome as this breakfast strata (they lost 11-10).