Frugal Recipe: Breakfast Pizza

In the late 1980’s I was working nights at a pizza place. When the owner made me a manager and switched me to days the difference was like, well, you know. Working the day shift there was much less of a chance of our drivers getting robbed and those of us behind the counter had very few drunks to deal with both in the shop and on the phones. Sunday mornings was our favorite time because it was so slow and quiet. It was during these down times that we invented breakfast pizza, or we thought we did, because we had never seen or heard of it before. We would roll out the dough, fit it in a deep dish pan, form the sausage and hamburger in little balls and cook them in the big ovens. We cracked a dozen eggs in a bowl, dumped in the cooked meat along with chopped onions, green peppers, mushrooms, black olives and whatever else sounded good. After mixing the contents of the bowl we poured in onto the dough in the pan and cooked it at 500 degrees until golden brown. Mmmmm. Man, was that good!

That began a tradition of ours at home, as well. Every few week we make up a breakfast pizza with whatever we have sitting around in the fridge. The following is a typical version.

Ingredients

Two packages of pizza crust mix (6.5 oz each)

Whatever leftover meat you have in the fridge. We have used everything from grilled chicken, hamburgers and steak to cut up hotdogs. Get creative!

Chopped onion, green pepper, black olives, whatever sounds good.

Garlic, crushed red peppers, parsley, basil, Tabasco, again whatever you want.

A few shakes of Parmesan cheese and a couple handfuls of shredded cheese – you decide what kind.

Sometimes we have a baked potato left over…I just grate it and throw it in, too.

A dozen eggs, mixed with a splash of milk.

Directions

Prepare the pizza crust mixes per instructions. I use two packages because my deep dish pan is 14 inches and no way will just one cover it. Spread the prepared mix out on the pan and try to work it up the inside edges, making more of a pie crust rather than a traditional flat pizza crust. Poke holes all over the crust with a fork (this prevents giant air bubbles from forming) and then prebake the crust at 400 degrees for about ten minutes.

Mix everything else together and pour it onto the crust. Bake at 400 degrees until done, usually 20 minutes or more depending on what all you’ve got in there.

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