Sausage strata

I love stratas for several reasons: their layers of flavors, their make-ahead ease and the fact that they use up the squares of guilt --  the stale bread I dutifully cut into cubes and stash in random bags in the freezer waiting for Someday.

Someday finally arrived this week in the form of sausage strata, a hearty meal perfect for a ridiculously cold night. Bonus: it meant running the oven for 40 minutes to help warm up the kitchen.

This Strata with Sausage, Cheese and Herbs recipe comes from Susan Selasky of the Detroit Free Press. See the full original recipe here: http://www.freep.com/article/20131217/FEATURES02/312170093/Strata-with-Sausage-Cheese-and-Herbs. It doesn’t help with my quest to cook a new recipe from each of my cookbooks this year, but it helps with another resolution: use up those pesky bread cubes clogging up precious freezer space.

You fry up a pound and a half of Italian sausage, drain and set aside. Then in the same pan add a bit of butter and cook one chopped red pepper, a cup of chopped onion and a package of sliced baby bella mushrooms.

To assemble, put slightly more than two cups of bread cubes in a greased 13-by-9 pan. Top that with half the sausage, half the veggie mixture and a cup of grated Fontina. Repeat layers. Then top with a mixture of 1 cup whipping cream, a half cup of half and half, 10 eggs (no, really), a generous amount of fresh thyme, a teaspoon of salt and some grated pepper.

As with all stratas, you need to let them sit for at least an hour. I mixed up mine Sunday night and baked it Monday night, which is longer than I usually let them soak, but it worked fine. You bake it for 40 minutes at 350 uncovered.

The Dave rating: a glorious antidote to the day. My rating: A good combination of flavors, and not nearly as heavy as I feared it might be. With 10 eggs, it skews toward the souffly end of stratas rather than the custardy end. The red peppers give it a touch of color, and the Fontina comes through nicely.

I suspect this strata is only as good as the sausage, and ours was a winner from the lovely people at Hilltop Pastures Family Farm http://www.hilltoppasturesfamilyfarm.com/

And now both the sausage and the bread cubes are out of an over-stuffed freezer.