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Christmas Morning Strata

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Assemble this vegetarian, low-lactose strata the night before, and then all you have to do on the morning you intend to serve it is bake.

Ingredients

Scale
  • 12 oz. grainy bread (I used a loaf from Le Panier in Pike Place Market)
  • A few sprigs’ worth of rosemary, stemmed and chopped
  • Large handful chopped parsley
  • 14 oz. (1 package) Gimme Lean
  • 4 oz. goat Gouda, grated
  • 4 oz. herbed chèvre
  • 8 eggs
  • 1 C Almond milk
  • 1 C stock
  • 1 1/2 t salt
  • 1 1/2 t ground dry mustard
  • 1/4 t black pepper
  • 1/4 t paprika

Instructions

  1. Cube up the bread into 1/2″ – 1″ square cubes, including the crusty bits.  Put it directly into a 9″ x 13″ baking dish.  Toss with the chopped rosemary and parsley.
  2. Heat a pan with some olive oil (2 T or so should do it), and crumble the Gimme Lean sausage into it. Cook this up until it’s nice and browned.
  3. Put the cooked sausage in with the bread in the baking dish.  Top the whole thing with 3/4 of both cheeses.
  4. In either a large mixing bowl or a blender, make your custard: Add the eggs, almond milk, stock, and all of the spices.  Blend or whisk.
  5. Pour the custard over the bread mixture. Poke any stray bread bits down below the surface. Distribute the rest of the cheese across the top.
  6. Cover with Saran wrap or foil, and refrigerate overnight.
  7. When ready to bake, uncover the dish and let it warm up while you preheat the oven to 350°F. Bake the strata for 40-45 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

Notes

This recipe is very adaptable — think of it as a template. You can substitute in any kind of cheese or sausage-like thing you want, or omit the sausage; use any kind of bread you want; tinker with the composition of the liquid.  I’ll leave you with some things I’ve tried that I think don’t work as well, so you can learn from my mistakes:

  • Don’t use soy milk. Though I find that soy milk works well in sweet baked goods (e.g. cakes), to me, its chalky flavor really comes through in an unpleasant way when you’re doing savory baked things. Almond milk works much better in these cases.
  • Prefer Gimme Lean to the Field Roast breakfast sausages. I love Field Roast, and use their hot-dog-sized products in pastas and such all the time. We also love their little apple-maple breakfast links. However, for my money, those have such a particular flavor that I don’t love them in this dish. Your mileage may vary, though! You might also try using 4-5 of their Italian or Mexican chipotle sausages instead of the Gimme Lean. If you do, let me know how it turns out!
  • After Christmas 2018, I reduced the liquid from 1 1/3 C to 1 C.  I haven’t yet tried this, so you might also try keeping the liquid amount and reducing by 1 egg.  I’ll report back … likely not until Christmas 2019. 🙂

Find it online: https://breadandjamforfrancis.com/christmas-morning-strata/