In January, Joey happened upon a post for a local restaurant that was going to serve breakfast pizzas for their New Year’s Day brunch.
We weren’t able to make it, but he kept mentioning it over the next few weeks—noting that we could surely figure out how to make a fantastic breakfast pizza ourselves.
After all, we are pretty good at breakfast at our house. Of course, we mostly just eat it for dinner, opting for boring items like granola bars and cereal in the morning, but I think it still counts.
One of our favorites is making biscuits with sausage gravy, and that became the base for our breakfast pizza idea. After some brainstorming, we came to a consensus and created this week’s recipe.
As you will see, it’s simple to customize. You can easily make it spicy or substitute some frozen hashbrown potatoes in place of a fresh spud. You can even use a gravy mix, if you like. I won’t tell anyone.
Breakfast Pizza
Ingredients
- 2 packages pre-made pizza dough I used 7.8-ounce crusts
- 1 pound sausage I used sage
- flour amount will vary, see directions
- milk I used skim (amount will vary, see directions)
- 1 medium potato thinly sliced
- an egg for each person
- salt and pepper to taste
- about 2 cups shredded cheese
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to whatever temperature is listed on your pre-made crusts. Roll them out onto pizza or sheet pans (place them on parchment paper for easier cleanup).
- Heat a large skillet over medium heat, saute the sausage, crumbling it as it browns.
- Once the sausage is cooked through, do not drain the fat from the pan. Sprinkle flour into the pan, a little at a time, while stirring. Add just enough flour to soak up all of the fat in the pan. You’ll know you have enough when the sausage is no longer shiny.
- Cook for a couple minutes, and then add about one cup of milk. Stir, scraping the bottom of the skillet as you do to get any cooked on bits.
- Add more milk, a little at a time, stirring constantly, until you reach your desired gravy consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste. (I also normally add some more sage and some cayenne pepper to mine.) Remove it from heat.
- Spread the gravy out on the crusts to within about an inch of the edge. Sprinkle cheese evenly over the gravy, and then top with potato slices.
- Carefully crack one egg for each person you’re feeding toward the center of the pizzas and sprinkle them with salt and pepper. Bake the pizzas for the amount of time on the crust packaging.
- Cut into slices and serve.
We really enjoyed this for supper. It kind of combines all the great flavors of breakfast into one easy-to-eat meal. Plus, it reheated really well, too.
Variations we thought about were you could wait until halfway through the pizzas baking to crack the eggs on top to get a runny yolk, and we’re going to go out of our way to use spicy sausage next time, too.
It’s always nicer when somebody else cooks for you, and if we get a chance at some restaurant-made breakfast pizza sometime, I’m sure we’ll take it. But now that we know how to make this ourselves, staying home for dinner is pretty great option, too.
This piece first appeared in print on Feb. 10, 2022.
Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.