One of my favourite things to do on weekend morning s have a long, indulgent brunch. As someone who wakes up to an alarm five days a week and doesn’t really have breakfast those days – only a green smoothie – I’m waiting for it all week.
So needless to say, we brunch often. I know we’ve talked about it on the blog before, but we prefer to make brunch at home rather than go out. There’s definitely a time and place for a good brunch spot, but breakfast foods are easy to make and gathering for brunch at home means we get to take our time (and no one judges us for the amount of breakfast cocktails we pair with it).
We always have the hardest time deciding whether we want to go savoury or sweet with our brunch menu. We’ve been doing sweet a lot lately (see our waffle bar and the best pancakes we’ve ever had) so we decided it was time for something savoury.
Enter breakfast pizza, your new favourite way to eat eggs. And guess what? It’s super easy to make. We used puff pastry as the base, which I was intimidated about using for some reason (maybe because I hadn’t before?) and now I’m wondering why I haven’t been capitalizing on this easy and delicious ingredient my entire life. I’m writing fan mail to Tenderflake as we speak.
What makes this pizza is that we started off with a sauce base – in this case a garlic scape pesto, but you can go traditional tomato sauce – and then we covered it with cheese. Then comes any other toppings you want to dabble with and then eggs.
I mean, this definitely isn’t a low cal breakfast, but that’s what the green smoothies during the week are for. It’s called balance my friends. And Sunday’s are for tipping the scale.
Here’s how to make our breakfast pizza, but you can easily customize it to suit your fancy.
- Puff Pastry – we used Tenderflake’s 10 x 10 inch pastry sheet, which was enough for three people
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup of cheese, grated (we used jalapeno Monterey Jack, but you can also use cheddar or mozzarella)
- 8-10 cherry tomatoes
- 2 tbs of feta cheese
- 4-5 basil leaves, chopped
- 8-10 sorrel leaves (optional, mainly for impressing your friends)
- Pinch of chilli flakes (optional, for topping)
- 1/2 cup of pesto sauce, recipe below (or you can use store-bought)
- Food processor (for the pesto sauce)
- Baking sheet
For the pesto sauce:
- 5 garlic scapes
- 1 cup of arugula
- 2 tbs of olive oil (or more, depending how thick you want your pesto to be)
- 1/2 cup of slivered almonds (pesto is meant to be made with pine nuts but almonds are so much cheaper and it tastes just as good in our opinion!)
- 1 tbs of parmesan cheese, grated
- Juice of 1 lemon
- Salt and Pepper (to taste)
- Preheat oven to 375 F
- While your oven is heating, make the pesto by combining all ingredients in a food processor and pulsing until combined. It should be a thick, creamy green sauce. Taste it to determine if you want to add any more of your ingredients and once it suits your fancy set it aside.
- Lay out your puff pastry on a baking sheet. Score a 1/2″ border around the edges of it (this is basically setting your crust so if you want it thicker go right ahead) and prick the puff pastry all over with a fork. Bake for 10 minutes.
- Grab your cherry tomatoes and place them in a small baking pan. Drizzle with olive oil and give them a quick pinch of salt. Bake for 10 minutes alongside the puff pastry.
- Remove the pastry and tomatoes from oven, and gently press down on the pastry if it has puffed up. Brush with pesto sauce, then cover with grated cheese.
- Carefully break the eggs, one at a time, into a small dish, then gently pour each egg onto the pizza.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes or until egg whites are cooked and the yolks are the way you like ’em.
- Remove from the oven and place the cherry tomatoes on top along with crumbled feta cheese, basil and sorrel.
- Slice and serve!
Now back to the breakfast cocktails we were talking about earlier. This pizza was in need of a cocktail pairing. Enter the Aperol Spritz, because we’ll take any excuse to drink bubbly. This bright and refreshing cocktail goes really nicely with the richness of the puff pastry. You can grab the recipe here.
This playlist will have you looking forward to your alarm. Filled with shiny happy tunes, you’ll be dancing while making your eggs and bakey (or in this case, breakkie pizza).