Making pizza at home is always more fun that it should be — I think it brings me back to times when my parents were cooking and I’d get to “help” by arranging pepperoni slices on top in smiley faces and generally loading up a pizza with all my favorite toppings, often to the great detriment of the final product.

If you buy pre-made dough, it’s also super quick. There’s something super satisfying about making your dough from scratch, to be sure, but on a weeknight, when you’re making a bunch of pies, or when you’re just lazy, store (or restaurant!)-bought dough is nice. When making pizza – or just about anything – I tend to overbuy and end up with too much dough. And what to do with it the next day? I’ll tell you what: breakfast pizza.

So next time you have pizza assembly leftovers (or just want a kick-ass brunch food!), check it out:

Makes one breakfast pizza, enough to feed four people.

Ingredients:

• 1 large pizza dough – I used one from Bertucci’s, who will sell you their dough for real cheap!
• ~8 slices bacon, about 1/2 lb
• 3 eggs
• 1 medium onion, chopped into thin slices
• 1/2 cup pizza sauce – I used Dave’s Fresh Pasta‘s arrabbiata sauce
• 1/3 lb mozzarella cheese
• black pepper
• kosher salt

Of course, like any pizza, you can play with these toppings as much as you want.

Start by preheating your oven to 500 degrees. Fry up the bacon in a cast iron skillet until it’s on the soggy side of done — it’ll finish up a bit in the oven. Pull it and pat it extra dry with paper towels — you don’t want grease to sog up your pizza. Once patted dry, cut it into small pieces.

Roll out the dough and put it onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  (If you don’t have any parchment paper handy, a lightly floured baking sheet will do. Parchment paper saves time on cleanup, though!) Sparingly spread the tomato sauce out on the pizza, then top with onions, cheese, and bacon.

The crown jewel of the breakfast pizza is of course the eggs; there are two ways you can do it that will both work great, but it depends what you’re aiming for. I did both, in the name of science.

Option A – the sunny side up: If you’re lazy and like runny eggs, the best thing to do is just to crack the three eggs on top of the pizza, then put it in the oven; they’ll end up sunny-side-up by the time the pizza is done.

Option B – the scramble: If you want something more solid, start a nonstick skillet over low heat with a teaspoon of reserved bacon grease. (Or oil, if you’re feeling lame.) Whip the eggs in a bowl, then add to the skillet once it’s warm. The goal here is to have very, very lightly cooked eggs — liquidy, but just starting to solidify:

Once they’re this done, dump the liquidy eggs on top of the pizza; they’ll be solid enough not to leak everywhere, but done enough to have a thin layer of delicious eggs on your finished product.

Sprinkle salt and black pepper on top to taste.

Throw it in the oven for 10-12 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. Pull it out and enjoy!

As I’ve mentioned in a number of other posts, I love having a hearty breakfast, which I define as containing decent amounts of fat and protein. Sadly, I think that most of the time we relegate such meals to weekends — delicious breakfasts become once-a-week brunches instead of everyday affairs. What makes a good brunch? A lot of the time, the third part of the holy trinity of brunch is grains, often fried potatoes.

Problem is, frying your potatoes in the morning is more than a ~5/10 minute affair, making it pretty tough to prepare on a weekday. So how can we get potato prep time under that crucial time? Double cooking and parallel prep.

Microwaving them to start out with gets the potatoes soft on the inside, while frying them in butter afterwards infuses them with extreme deliciousness. Hop to it!

Ingredients:

• 1 potato
• 1/2 tablespoon butter
• Salt
• Pepper
• Spices of choice – try rosemary, thyme, red pepper, chili powder, whatever you like

Now while this is preparing, you have some free time — use it to make coffee, mix a bloody mary, or ideally to make your quick egg recipe of choice to round out your meal. I’ll break it down by ideal time so you can optimize your morning meal. Times might be optimistic, but after all, we have places to be!

0:00 – Cube the potato into ~1/2″ cubes. When done, throw ‘em in a bowl.

0:45 – Put the bowl of diced potatoes in the microwave on high for 3 minutes, 30 seconds. Start a cast iron skillet heating up over low heat. You have three free minutes, so scramble your eggs and heat up a second skillet for them.

3:45 – Add the butter to the skillet.

4:15 – Pull the potatoes out of the microwave, and add them to the pan. Generously dump salt, pepper, and your other spices of choice on top. Let them sit for a little bit, then stir continuously while you tend to whatever else you have cooking.

7:15 – Dump the potatoes out onto a plate and enjoy with eggs, OJ, and coffee. I usually dump hot sauce on them also, but that’s almost always a mistake.

Part of this complete breakfast.

Happy morning!

For the last year or so, I’ve made it the habit of preparing eggs in some format in the morning — hearty start, good protein and fat to start the day, and an excellent way to recycle just about any leftovers from the night before and make them feel breakfast-y.

Problem is, on mornings where time is tight or when running on empty, heating up a pan to fry or scramble some eggs means one less snooze button press, or another 10 minutes late to work.

I’d read about microwaving eggs before, but I’d always dismissed it as foolish and gross. Turns out though, with quality ingredients and just a tiny bit more time, microwave eggs are quick, nearly mess-less, and can be pretty good. They’re never going to have the deliciousness of perfect sunny side ups or the luxurious feel of a tasty omelette, but for something that you can whip up with only a microwave in under 3 minutes, they’re pretty damn good.

Ingredients:

• 1 large egg
• spices, I used:
  • dill weed
  • black pepper
  • hot pepper flakes
• a teaspoon of olive oil or butter
• a teaspoon of cream or whole milk (optional)
• small slice of cheese, or pinch of grated cheese
• english muffin or toast

Put an english muffin or a couple slices of bread in the toaster. (Optional, of course — but eggs + bread are the best!)

Crack an egg into a bowl, add in dill weed, black pepper, hot red pepper flakes, and a pinch of kosher salt, and about a teaspoon of cream if you have it around, then scramble with a fork.

Use a paper town to smear olive oil (Or butter, if you roll that way.) around the edges of a ramekin, then dump the egg mixture in. Cut a small slice of cheddar cheese and place it on top.

Microwave for one minute. (This is in my shitty $20 Target microwave, if you have a legit microwave, you might want to cut down the time a bit.)

Inspect the eggs — they shouldn’t be runny. If they are, nuke ‘em for another 15 seconds or so. Extract the eggs with a fork or just dump them out vigorously onto your toast, which should be popping out of the toaster just about then. Enjoy!

Shockingly tasty, only two dishes dirtied, both dishwashable. And I dare you to  look at that first picture and tell me that doesn’t look good. Mmm.

Now I don’t know about you, but I really like a hearty breakfast. Even on a weekday morning when time is short, I think it’s definitely worthwhile to eat well and have a real breakfast, not just a granola bar or a bowl of cereal.

Having a bit of protein, carbs, and fat in there really makes my morning much more pleasant.

Of course, frying up eggs every morning gets a bit dull, so I like to play with the format and raid the ‘fridge for leftovers to see how I can spice it up.

I had made some Indian-spiced pulled pork earlier in the week (stay tuned for that recipe), and I’ve been trying to get through it, so I came up with this quick recipe, which isn’t terribly original but is a damn damn fine breakfast you can prep in under 5 minutes. On to the recipe!

This recipe serves one, but could be scaled easily.

• 1 tsp vegetable oil
• 1 corn tortilla
• leftover pulled pork, about 2oz
• 1 egg
• pickled jalepeno slices
• Mexican hot sauce (Goya or Valentino, preferably)

Get a small, nonstick skillet hot then add the vegetable oil.

Fry the tortilla and set aside on a paper towel.

Add the pulled pork to the pan, saute briefly, then crack the egg on top of it. Wait for the white to become opaque, then scramble egg with the pork.

Once done, empty the pan onto a tortilla and garnish with jalepeno slices and a few drips of hot sauce. Enjoy immediately with an espresso.