Strata Sphere

not my photo but one from Pinterest with no credit given

This afternoon I had about an hour before the boys arrived for their play date with us and decided that was time enough to make yogurt and to do something with all those bread end pieces I had in the freezer.  Now I must share that we buy really good bakery breads and I am loathe to toss the odd slice or the end pieces, so I save them.



I find that these pieces often net me enough to make croutons, French toast and give me an ample supply of bread crumbs, fresh or dried, to use in recipes.  Of late however, I've not been able to quite keep up with the supply I had on hand.  If a loaf starts to feel dry, into the freezer it goes.  I'd recently made a croutons and French toast but here I had loads of bread pieces on hand.  I also happen to have a great many eggs at the moment... I decided that a Strata was the perfect dish to use up this excess of good foods that might otherwise go to waste.

Stratas are old fashioned things.   Put a bit of sugar in the mix and you have a bread pudding.  Leave out the sugar and you typically find yourself with a savory dish, often enough these days served as a breakfast casserole.  It's a shame to relegate such a hearty dish to breakfast or brunch.

But let us start at the beginning.  A good basic recipe for a Strata: 6 cups bread cubes, 4 eggs, 2 cups of milk, salt and pepper.   That's pretty much it!  Leave out the salt and pepper and add 1/2 to 1 cup of sugar for a bread pudding...but let me tell you more about the possibilities in a Strata, which generally has shredded cheese included..

A variety of ingredients may be added to this basic recipe and in whatever combination you choose.

Meats: Turkey, Pork or Beef Sausage, cooked chicken or turkey, ham, chorizo

Vegetables: Celery, Onion, Mushrooms, Spinach, Broccoli, Zucchini, Bell Peppers, Tomatoes

Any type of hard or semi hard cheese may be used including, as well as soft cheeses such as goat cheese or diced cream cheese.

I won't share a breakfast strata recipe with you but will tell you that when I make mine I generally add diced mushrooms, sausage, onion and cheddar cheese.   I've recently read a recipe that used frozen spinach that had been thawed and squeezed dry, Swiss cheese and ham.  I think this sounds quite yummy but I'm on a bit of a spinach kick at the moment.

One of my post Thanksgiving recipes is a strata that calls for diced turkey, red bell pepper, onions and sliced celery with cheddar cheese.

Several years ago, I had the pleasure of eating a so called 'Broccoli Casserole' at a favorite restaurant.  I asked for the recipe.  It included cooked broccoli and blue cheese dressing in place of the cheese.

Recently I made a French Toast Strata which called for cream cheese cubes and while not sweetened was topped with a cinnamon streusel and then served with a maple syrup drizzle.  Nothing much really in the way of ingredients but it was so very good when combined together and was a hit at our breakfast table.

Today I was inspired by that to make a similar sort of recipe for our breakfast this weekend.  I divided the ingredients between two 9 inch foil pans.   I used the last of the topping I'd made to go on our sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving which I'd also frozen and found while pulling bread pieces from the freezer this morning.  I did not add any sugar nor cheese to this one but did season it with vanilla and cinnamon

The beauty of a Strata is that it takes economical  foodstuffs and brings them to the table in a most delicious way.  I hope that you will try one of these if you haven't made one part of your standard menu.   If you are a household of two, you can divide among greased smaller casseroles and you can even freeze them before baking.   Just thaw then bake as the recipe suggests.