Eggs, Biscuits & Bacon

I make a mean weekend breakfast. The variables often change; sometimes it's a frittata, sometimes it's waffles. The only constants are freshly ground coffee and paper towel napkins because who uses cloth napkins at breakfast? Lately, though, my mean weekend breakfast looks a lot like the breakfast you see above: homemade biscuits, crispy bacon and two sunny side-up eggs. I'm going to walk you through it so you can make that same plate for your loved ones this weekend.

Last weekend I gave a new biscuit recipe a whirl. My standard biscuit recipe is this one which is a great recipe but it requires you to bake all the biscuits at once (something to do with steam) so we always end up with too many cooked biscuits that don't get eaten. With recipes like the one I'm about to share (from "Staff Meals" by David Waltuck) the biscuits get baked on a baking sheet so you can bake as many as you plan to eat and the rest you can freeze for the next weekend (and it just so happens I have four frozen biscuits waiting for us tomorrow morning).

Start with the biscuits: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray.

In a large bowl, add 2 cups of all-purpose flour, 4 teaspoons of baking powder and 1 teaspoon of salt and whisk that all together. Take a cold stick of unsalted butter out of your refrigerator (8 tablespoons) and cut it into 1/2-inch thick pieces. Drop the pieces into the flour mixture and using two sharp knives, a pastry blender or your fingers, work the butter into the flour. The flour will go from looking powdery to looking like "coarse meal" (or grated Parmesan cheese). Don't take it too far--that's a new tip--you want a few larger lumps of butter in your dough.

When that happens, pour 3/4 cup of cold buttermilk into the bowl and work it into the flour mixture with a wooden spoon just until a dough forms. Flour a large cutting board or work surface and dump the dough on to that. Knead it a few times to get rid of excess stickiness. Then using your floured hands or a rolling pin, flatten the dough to 1/2-inch thick. Use a biscuit cutter or a cooke cutter or, if you don't have those, a round drinking glass to cut out 3-inch biscuits. Or you can make the dough a square shape and use a knife to cut it up into 3 inch squares.

Place the biscuits that you want to eat on the sprayed cookie sheet. The ones that you want to freeze, place on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and put in the freezer. (Pop them off a few hours later and save in a freezer bag.) Put the Now Biscuits into the oven and bake for 15 to 20 minutes until lightly browned.

While they're baking, lay 4 strips of bacon in a non-stick skillet or cast iron skillet and put it on medium heat. (Note: we're making breakfast for two here. Obviously, if you want more of this, double it, triple it, whatever!)

In a bowl, crack 4 eggs, careful not to break the yolks. In another non-stick skillet, melt 1 tablespoon of butter on medium/high heat until foamy and hot. Carefully pour in the eggs (try to space out the yolks) and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Lower the heat a little--you don't want brown crispy edges, just cooked whites--and as the whites begin to set (it'll take a minute or two) turn off the heat and cover with a lid to finish cooking the whites immediately around the yolk.

Meanwhile, flip your bacon. Allow it to finish crisping up and if your timing is right, your biscuits should be done when your eggs and bacon are.

Take the biscuits out of the oven and place two on each person's plate. Sprinkle the eggs with some chopped parsley (or other herbs, if you have them) scoop two on to each plate along with two pieces of bacon. Serve it all up with marmalade for the biscuits. Check out this biscuit up close--those lumps of butter made it extra flaky:

Skip the lines for brunch and make a mean breakfast this weekend. We'll be eating ours in precisely 24 hours.