How To Make Quick And Easy Breakfast Pizza

Pizza for breakfast? I thought ridiculous! However, I started making this back in the 1970s and 1980s when my kids were small and found that getting them to eat breakfast was a snap once I found creative and surprising things to make for breakfast. This was by far a favorite in our house - it still is 30 years later! When our grown children visit, they still enjoy having none other than breakfast pizza. There are a lot of variations but here is my 'tried and true' from way back when and then some ideas for other variations.

RECIPE FOR DELICIOUS BREAKFAST PIZZA

INGREDIENTS

• 1 lb. ground turkey breakfast sausage (or substitute pork sausage, mild Italian sausage, etc)
• 1 or 2 packages of refrigerated crescent rolls (or substitute any pizza dough or premade pizza crust) NOTE: I actually substituted biscuit dough for mine and it worked extremely well and made a thicker crust
• 1 cup frozen hash brown potatoes, thawed (or substitute hash brown potatoes from the refrigerated aisle or shred real potato to equal 1 cup)
• 1 cup cheese shredded cheese (Cheddar, Swiss, Fontina, Provolone - or a mixture)
• 5 eggs or egg substitute
  5 eggs = 1-1/4 cups
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1/2 teaspoon salt if desired
• 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper if desired

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Cook sausage in a skillet. Cook over medium high heat until evenly browned. Drain on paper towels, crumble and set that aside.
3. Separate crescent roll dough into 8 triangles. (Or substitute another crust at this point in recipe)
4. Place these triangles on an ungreased 12 inch pizza pan with the points of the triangle towards the center. Press together to form a crust. In the end, the center of the crust should all come together and be sealed. (You are fitting 8 triangles to form a big circle, pressing into place with your fingers.) The outside edge should be slightly lipped up to form a crust.
5. Spoon the cooked and drained sausage over the crust.
6. Sprinkle on the hash browns.
7. Top with cheddar cheese.
8. Beat together the eggs or egg substitute (or a mixture of both), milk, salt and pepper.
9. Pour the egg mixture over the crust.
10. Bake in the preheated oven until eggs firm up, about 25 to 30 minutes.
11. Let cool, slice and enjoy!

• Substitute your own pizza crust for the crescent roll dough
• Add 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese to the above recipe - bake the same
• Use a prepackaged pizza dough for the crust
• Use egg substitute if you would rather not use real eggs
• As above, substitute different cheeses for a different flavor - Pepper Jack gives a unique taste and a little spice. Fontina or Provolone give a bit of a richer flavor. Experiment with different varieties of Cheddar cheese and see which ones suit your tastes best. Monterey Jack makes an excellent breakfast pizza as well.
• Experiment with different sausages or try crumbled bacon instead of turkey sausage. Just make sure that the meat is cooked before you add that to the pizza dough.
• Try different hash browns - frozen, in the refrigerator section or grated from scratch. See which gives you the desired texture. One of the videos tells how to use the hash browns as the crust itself and you bake that on parchment paper - no crust is used.
• You can add all kinds of variety - maybe do a semi-Mexican breakfast pizza for brunch or add spinach or other vegetables and omit the meat.
• Basically if you stick with 1 crust, 1 cup of hash browns, the equivalent of 5 eggs or egg substitute and 1 cup of cheese as your basic ingredients, you can substitute other ingredients and have a completely different breakfast creation.