Egg Casserole

I've made this recipe a number of times and it's definitely one of my favorites.  It's easy to make and can be modified with whatever you have in your fridge at any given time.  Here is the recipe as it is written in the Scrapbook:

Egg Casserole       

3 cups milk
6 eggs
10 pieces of bread

Tear bread into bite-size pieces and put in a 9x13 inch pan.  Mix milk and eggs and pour over bread.  Can add cheese, onions, peppers, tomatoes, black olives, sour cream, sausage, bacon, ham, salt, and pepper.  We always bake the meat with the eggs and use the vegetables, cheese, & sour cream as garnishments.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.  Great for Easter or breakfast.  Enjoy!  Serves 6-8 people.

I always halve this recipe whenever I make it and put it into a smaller pan.  The pan pictured above is 8x6.  I like to think these directions give me license for adding whatever I want as long as I stick to the basic 3 ingredients of eggs, bread, and milk.

This time, I threw in onion, cheese, veggie sausage links, and grape tomatoes since that's what I had on hand.  For the bread, I used a couple of hard rolls that were in our freezer.  Any bread will do, but I think day old bread works really well with this.  Ciabatta would also work really nicely.

I layered the pieces of bread on the bottom of the pan and sprinkled the onions, sausage, and tomatoes over that.  I added salt/pepper to the egg and milk mixture and poured it over the ingredients in the pan.  Then I sprinkled a healthy dose of shredded cheese on top.  I put this in the oven as directed -- 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

As it cooks, the bread absorbs the milk/egg mixture and the casserole puffs up.  Also, the bread and cheese get nice and crispy on top.  When it's done, give it a light poke in the middle with your finger.  If it bounces back, then it's done.  If it sinks, then I would leave it in a little bit longer.

I had some leftover cilantro in the fridge that I added for garnish.  Here is the first piece of the casserole:

And here is how I prefer to eat it -- with a nice drizzle of ketchup on the top:

Delicious!

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