Spinach and Gruyère Breakfast Casserole Recipe (2024)

If the recipe asks for 8 hours chilling, "preheat the oven" should NOT be the first step.

The oven preheat is for drying out the baguette.

I put this together at the crack of dawn, like 5:30 am, while the coffee brewed and then sipping my first cup, it goes together that quickly, then popped it in the fridge to remove about 5:30 pm to add finishing cheese while the oven preheated to pop it in to use as dinner. Excellent for that meal too. Fresh citrus slices alongside, a glass of Champagne. Ahh...some evening.

This may be weird but it sure would be sweet if NYT recipes could be printed on 2 pages (one double sided page). So many NYT recipes recently end up with a single paragraph spilling over onto a third page. This is meaningless for those who don’t print out recipes, but, for those of us who do, it shouldn't be that hard and would save a lot of paper.

When I first saw this recipe I was delighted as I thought I was looking at cauliflower, and I had a head to use up. After reading the recipe I decided to forge ahead, roasting the cauliflower florets till tender in place of the bread. The only other modification was using a vegan cream rather than heavy cream, and cutting it back to 1 1/2 cups as there was no bread to soak it up. Delicious and easy! Will definitely make again.

Pick up the baguette in the bakery section, take it over to the produce section, and weigh it to make sure it is at least 8 ounces. You may want a larger baguette if you don't want to include the crust. Then when cubing it, put a bowl on your kitchen scale, zero it out, and deposit cubes into the bowl until you have 8 ounces.The casserole is not going to be ruined if you have 7 or 9 ounces of bread cubes.

Foodie - You ask "how much" is 0z of baguette. As with many recipes, a kitchen scale is your friend here. It is more reliable than a volume measurement here. I use mine for a recipe like this. But googling the question results in these answers: 8 oz of baguette is roughly 3.3 cups cubed.

Use half as much Morton's as Diamond Crystal. It has to do with the size of the salt crystals. I think Morton's is finer and so will result in more salt (sodium) in each measurement.

To everyone who asked and was like me--yes, you can absolutely make this without 8 hours of refrigeration time. It will turn out more like a bread and egg casserole than a custard, but it's still absolutely delicious and you should ignore the snob telling you to just follow the recipe.

I think so - the point of the dried bread being "re-hydrated" with the egg and cream is to make the bread custardy - it should hold it's form.Or you could get to step 5, and not mix the bread into the egg-cream mixture, but keep them in the fridge separate. Mix them together and assemble the next day, pop it in the fridge, and then pull out and bake the day after that.I've made a similar recipe by Cooks Illustrated - a strata - and there is often mushroom or sausage.

How much is 8 ounces of baguette? 1 whole baguette? Some number of cups of cubes?

Skip the 8 hours of refrigeration, but be prepared for less than optimal results. It always pays to follow the recipe.

5 stars wasn't enough, I have to actually write how delicious this is and how highly I recommend it. Oh the nutmeg!! I used Comte instead of Gruyere but next time I might splurge... or not. Why spend more to improve on perfection.

For NancyG: On most printers one may adjust the "zoom" to less than 100%. Adjust percentage down until everything you want to print fits on one page. I do this all the time w NYT recipes. Hope this helps.

Do you mean with a different kind of bread? Sure. Give it a try. But if you mean without any bread at all then I think you should skip this recipe. It's a pretty core part of the dish.

I’ve made this twice now. The first time I used the recommended amount of Gruyère. It was not enough. The dish went over well, but I could tell it wasn’t sufficient. The second time I almost doubled it and the recipe came out perfect.

I ended up adding more bread because this seemed like not enough…next time I want to try it as is. It was still delicious with about twice the bread, but I missed the more custardy effect. A fantastic Christmas breakfast/brunch item to have in my back pocket.

Do you think frozen tater tots could be substituted for the bread cubes?

Would there be any negative impacts to preparing this dish 36 hours in advance (as opposed to 8 hours)

I used a Pyrex casserole dish that measures 10.5 x 7.5. Added only 5 eggs instead of 8. And a cup and a half of cream/milk. I put an entire small head of cauliflower in which I roasted along with a cup of bread (adding after cauliflower was almost done). I used some of the bread in the mixture but toasted the rest with butter in a skillet for a crunchy topping. It was really delicious - the lemon and nutmeg are great. For some reason it took about 70 minutes to cook - a long time.

Don't bring home four oz. of cheese and expect to have two cups, when shredded. You will only have one. I had to make another trip to the store in the midst of cooking.

I made this because I wanted something foolproof to cook for a brunch; I could do this the night before and pop it into the oven the next day as I prepared salads. It worked, but I would have liked the flavors better if I had them in a custardy quiche. This seemed too bready. It was not a quick prep for me, though quiche would have taken longer. I guess I would do it again under similar circ*mstances.

We all agreed that this was a delicious dish and came out perfectly, even with slight modifications. I used 10 eggs, but only five of the yokes to reduce some cholesterol. Also, I used frozen spinach, squeezed out.I made it the day before and baked it first thing in the morning, after topping with cheese.

Made following recipe, used Trader Joe’s baguette, 9x13 Pyrex dish and baked 40 minutes. Delicious!

I'm with you, NancyG, but I found a fix for that 3rd page. I reduce my "scaling" by up to 15% until that 3rd page disappears (I'm on a Mac). I find that's about as far as I can go before the print is too small to read comfortably. Now I have 1 page recipes - front and back printed.

I had to make this gluten free - used the Against the Grain baguette - it was divine.

This recipe is amazing exactly as-is. We bake it on Monday AM, have a slice piping hot, and then cut it into individual portions. One of those for 30-45 seconds in the microwave is such a fantastic, quick start to a weekday! We’ve started adding crumbled veggie sausage at the end of the sauté stage and it’s somehow even better. Love this recipe!!

This recipe is delicious, exactly as-is.We put it all together on Sunday night and bake it early Monday morning. We each have a slice when it’s hot and fresh and at its peak, then let it cool and portion it out into individual slices. Pop one of those in the microwave for 30 to 45 seconds and it’s such a quick and delicious start to every weekday. We recently started adding crumbled veg sausage at the end of the sauté, and it somehow made it even better.

We love this recipe! We have never waited 8hrs… sometimes use veggie sausage, onions, bok choy, spicy cheese… greek yogurt and coconut milk instead of milk… turns out great every time! Great for holidays or just a lazy chilly day. Yummmm!

This was so good. We did a test run a week before entertaining and made two small tweaks the second time: adding one more egg and cutting the bread cubes smaller (around 1 inch). We also used white wine vinegar instead of vermouth. It was a big hit!