Breakfast Club: because breakfast should be more interesting than tea & toast or coffee & cereal.
During December, I am delighted to be hosting Breakfast Club, a bloggers challenge created by the very talented Helen at Fuss Free Flavours to encourage more creativity in the kitchen for that all important first meal of the day. I really hope you’ll join in the fun by entering a dish or two.
Let’s do brunch!
The theme for Breakfast Club this month is Brunch. According to Marge Simpson’s charming Casanova of a bowling instructor, the über smooth Jacques, brunch is…
…not quite breakfast, it’s not quite lunch, but it comes with a slice of cantaloupe at the end. You don’t get completely what you would at breakfast, but you get a good meal!
Brunch is my idea of a perfect breakfast. The kind of lazy breakfast you cook and eat at leisure on a relaxed Sunday, when you’re not in a rush to get to work or school. The kind of laid back breakfast you take your time over with a large pot of coffee and a selection of papers.
So no, not the kind of breakfast I get to eat all that often, but I always make sure I indulge when the opportunity presents itself. And a very good idea to have a stock of good brunch recipes up your sleeve for when it does.
It’s very easy to enter a brunch dish into this month’s Breakfast Club:
- Email me with the URL for your brunch recipe blog post
- Mention in your post you are entering your dish into Breakfast Club, include the logo above, and add links back to both this post and the Breakfast Club page at Fuss Free Flavours
- Entries can be submitted to other events
- You are welcome to enter old posts/recipes but they must be republished with the logo and links above
- If you use Twitter please use #blogbreakfastclub and tweet your entry, and I’ll retweet everyone I see
- The closing date is Friday 28 December 2012.
Hopefully, that all makes sense but if you do have any questions, please comment below. I can’t wait to see your entries!
Oh and before I forget, Helen at Fuss Free Flavours is always on the look out for new guest hosts for the Breakfast Club, and last month’s round up is here.
To get things started, I thought I’d give you my brunch recipe. I found it hard to choose which one as I have so many brunch favourites. I love pancakes and did think about entering these indulgent lemon and ricotta pancakes.
Or how about a more virtuous start to the day with some homemade granola?
But then I do also find it hard to resist a good fry up, but really – who needs a recipe for that? And so I’ve decided on…
The full English pizza
I know it sounds a little crazy. Or maybe a lot crazy. But this is a perfect and fun weekend brunch, particularly when you’ve had a few drinks the night before and need some stodge to sort you out. It’s essentially all the usual suspects you’d find in a cooked English breakfast but on top of a pizza. Gorgeous. And you probably won’t need to eat for the rest of the day.
I get up early to make the pizza dough. Then go back to bed for a bit with a cup of tea while the dough rises. But if that sounds to you like too much of a palaver, then ready-made pizza bases would make life a little easier.
Makes 4 pizzas
For the dough:
400g strong white bread flour
1 tsp salt
1 x 7g sachet fast action dried yeast
2 tbsp chopped fresh oregano
250ml luke warm water
1 tbsp olive oil
For the topping:
200g spinach
knob of butter
passata, about half a jar
4 pork sausages, grilled and sliced
4 rashers bacon, grilled and chopped
mozzarella, 2 x 250g balls
4 free range eggs
To make the pizza dough, put the flour, salt, dried yeast and oregano into a large mixing bowl and mix well.
Make a well in the middle and pour in the lukewarm water and oil. Gradually work the flour into the liquid, making a soft dough. If it’s too dry, add a drop more water. If it’s too sticky, add a little more flour.
Flour your surface before tipping the dough onto it. Knead the dough by stretching it away from you, then pulling back into a ball. Do this for five minutes or so, until the dough is smooth and elastic.
Return the dough to the mixing bowl, cover loosely with cling film and put in a warm place for about an hour, until the dough has doubled in size. This is when I retire back to bed for a while.
Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas Mark 6 or use the middle of the top oven of an Aga.
Uncover the risen dough and punch it back down. Flour the surface again and divide the dough into four balls. Stretch or roll out each ball until you have a thin circle about 22cm across. Place the pizzas onto slightly oiled baking sheets.
Melt the butter in a frying pan. Add the spinach and cook gently until wilted.
Pour a couple of tablespoons of passata onto each pizza, smoothing out with the back of the spoon. Spread some spinach over each base (squeeze out any excess butter), followed by the pieces of sausage and bacon, and finish with torn pieces of mozzarella. Be careful not to overload the centre of the pizza, where you’ll be cooking your egg later.
Bake the pizzas in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Remove from the oven and carefully break an egg into the middle of each pizza. Return to the oven for 3 to 4 minutes until the white is just cooked but the yolk is still soft. Enjoy at your leisure!
December’s entries for Breakfast Club:
- Turkey, Cranberry & Stilton Christmas Brunch Muffins from Fuss Free Flavours
- Beet Greens & Red Pepper Frittata from On Top of Spaghetti
- White Chocolate & Cranberry Christmas Cookies from Chez Foti
- Buck Rarebit from Credit Munched
- Courgette and Mushroom Omelette with Garlic and Parsley from Bangers & Mash
- Swiss Scrambled Eggs, Croissants and Shakes from Fabulicious Food
- Mushrooms on Rye Toast from The Garden Deli
- Minestrone Soup from Divine Foods Living
- Nduja Potato Cakes from Foodycat
- Christmas Breakfast Muffins from Elizabeth’s Kitchen
- Speculoos & Mascarpone Pancake Cake from Kavey Eats
- Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins from Mondomulia
- Brunch Quesadillas – Fab Food 4 All
Bangers & Mash 