Epic Layered Breakfast Pie
Andrea Buckett
With little effort and only a handful of ingredients, this breakfast pie looks and tastes spectacular. Aside from scrambling a carton of eggs, it only requires a bit of assembly before it’s baked. Golden puff pastry encases a mélange of hearty breakfast ingredients: scrambled eggs as well as ham and cheese, balanced for good measure with spinach and red peppers. It’s highly adaptable, so you can choose your own adventure when it comes to the filling, changing up the cheese, vegetables (just make sure they’re cooked), and deli meat. Or you can make it vegetarian. This pie is, of course, fantastic served warm, but I’ve been known to sneak a cold slice too.
- 1 pkg (450 g) pre-rolled puff pastry (2 sheets), thawed and chilled
- Flour, for dusting
- 13 eggs, divided
- 2 tbsp Dijon mustard
- 3 tbsp butter
- 1 jar (280 ml) whole roasted red peppers, drained
- 10 slices Swiss cheese (about 225 g)
- 20 slices thinly sliced ham (about 340 g)
- 1 pkg (500 g) frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
- Ketchup, for serving (optional)
Remove one sheet of thawed puff pastry from the fridge. Lightly dust your work surface with flour. Unroll the puff pastry sheet. Roll out the pastry into an 11" square, then tuck it into a 9" round springform pan. (I know, tucking a square into a round pan sounds odd, but it does work.) Gently stretch the pastry so it comes three-quarters of the way up the sides of the pan, pressing it in so it stays in place. Trim and discard any excess pastry hanging over the edge. Refrigerate the crust while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
In a large bowl, whisk 12 of the eggs. Whisk in the Dijon mustard.
In a non-stick frying pan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the eggs and cook, stirring occasionally, until they just set and are soft scrambled. Transfer the eggs to a baking sheet and let them cool for about 10 minutes.
Drain the peppers. Pull each pepper open, exposing the interior, and remove any seeds. Lay each pepper flat and pat each with a paper towel to remove any excess moisture.
Remove the prepared pastry from the fridge. Scoop half of the scrambled eggs into the pan, distributing them evenly over the pastry. Lay five slices of cheese evenly over the eggs, then lay ten ham slices evenly over the cheese. Top with the roasted peppers, then the spinach. Lay the remaining ham over the spinach, then the remaining cheese over the ham. Scoop the remaining eggs over top.
Lightly dust a work surface with flour and roll out the second sheet of puff pastry into a 10" square. Top the egg filling with the pastry, gently pressing it down on the filling and into the perimeter of the pan to seal the ingredients inside. Trim and discard excess pastry. Cut an X in the top of the pie to allow steam to escape.
Whisk the remaining egg to make an egg wash and brush it liberally over the pastry.
Bake in a 400°F oven until the pastry is golden brown, 35–45 minutes. Remove from the oven and let the pie cool completely. Wrap the pan with plastic wrap and refrigerate. To serve, remove the plastic wrap and reheat at 350°F. A slice will reheat in 8–10 minutes; the whole pie will reheat in 25–30 minutes. Serve with ketchup, if desired.
Tips:
- If you don’t have a springform pan, you can make this in a 9" square non-stick cake pan.
- Make the pie ahead, bring it to the cottage in a cooler, and refrigerate it when you arrive. Serve within three days.
To purchase The Essential Cottage Cookbook by Andrea Buckett, click here.
Excerpted from The Essential Cottage Cookbook by Andrea Buckett. Copyright © 2025 Andrea Buckett. Photographs by Betty Shin Binon. Published by Appetite by Random House®, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
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