Make Breakfast Casserole Taste Like A $20 Brunch Dish With This One Ingredient

Breakfast lovers, rejoice: You don't have to venture to a fancy brunch spot to get a delicious morning meal. Turns out, you can do a lot with a carton of eggs, breakfast sausage, potatoes, and a few other flavorful, savory ingredients right at home by combining them into an all-powerful breakfast casserole. The dish combines all the mouth-watering elements of brunch with the ease of one baking dish and only one simple cook time. Our favorite way to elevate it to restaurant-quality is by adding a layer of fluffy croissants to the bottom.

Instead of relying on just eggs and potatoes, our croissant breakfast casserole recipe calls for lining the bottom of the casserole dish with pieces of buttery, flaky croissant. It serves as the perfect foundation for the dish, soaking up the casserole's egg and milk goodness, and creates a crispy crunch at the end of each bite. You'll feel as though you've ordered a fancy $20 quiche from a French bakery, but with popular grocery chain croissants instead.

Beyond croissants, our recipe calls for gooey cheese, crispy pancetta, six eggs, and a combination of herbs and spices. But there are plenty of other ways to customize the dish. Adding soft cottage cheese or ricotta, crumbled cornflakes on top, or soy sauce instead of salt, for example, are just a few chef hacks to make egg casseroles much tastier.  

Home and professional chefs alike love this creative way to use bakery croissants. But there are a few tricks to ensure your croissant casseroles come out tasty every time. First, try to use day-old or drier croissants so they better absorb the wet ingredients. Another tip is to tear the croissants into larger pieces, so the bottom of the dish is completely covered. This makes it easier to serve once baked.

Cook and prep time are other factors to keep in mind. Our recipe calls for pouring the wet ingredients over the croissants and letting it sit in the fridge for up to eight hours or overnight. This creates the ultimate texture and flavor, and helps the casserole bake more evenly. After it's been refrigerated, let it sit on the counter for around 30 minutes until you're ready to bake. Ideally, it'll go in the oven for 55 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

From there, the topping possibilities are completely up to you, Add crumbled bacon, chives, hot sauce or hot honey, or even jalapeño slices if you're going for a Tex-Mex flavored breakfast. And of course, you can't go wrong with adding piles of cheese. Next time you're hosting brunch, you're guaranteed to wow your guests with this elevated, yet simple, croissant casserole. All your brunch needs now are these mimosas perfect for a crowd.