15.5 Breakfast and brunch

Breakfast is often eaten in a hurry, which is why breakfast sandwiches, jumbo muffins and take-away coffee cups sell so well. Brunch is the opposite: a slow, social meal that joins breakfast and lunch. Its menu runs from breakfast dishes to almost anything else. Unlike breakfast, it often comes with champagne or another alcoholic drink and ends with a pastry or dessert.

Kitchens serve breakfast in many forms:

• A hotel or resort may run several at once: a free continental breakfast (coffee, juice, sweet rolls), a full-service dining room ordering à la carte, room service, and a casual snack bar.
• The big hotel brunch buffet on Sundays and holidays is an American tradition for celebrations.
• Small shops in office and shopping complexes sell bagels, muffins, sweet rolls and coffee.
• Coffee houses sell coffee drinks, pastries, breads and quiche.
• Fast-food places now open early with breakfast menus.

Breakfast can include nearly any food eaten later in the day. What a guest thinks a proper breakfast is depends on their culture, background, money and home region, and on when they sleep and work. A typical breakfast menu covers these groups:

• coffee, tea and other hot drinks;
• fruit and fruit juice;
• eggs;
• breads, including sweet breads, and cereals and grains;
• potatoes;
• pancakes, waffles and French toast;
• breakfast meats such as bacon, breakfast sausage and smoked ham, or fish;
• dairy foods: milk, cheese and yogurt.

Hardly anyone eats from every group at one meal, but most kitchens offer something from each so that guests find what they expect.

Breakfast around the world

A North American traveling today can usually find a familiar breakfast almost anywhere, but in many countries people still eat their own traditional morning food.

Traditional breakfasts.

Breakfast meats

At most meals meat is the main food. At breakfast it is usually a side, and breakfast meats tend to be spicy or strongly flavored. A hearty menu may offer a small steak, usually sirloin and often pan-fried, or a pork chop. For a breakfast hash, dice or shred roast turkey, roast beef or corned beef and sauté it with potatoes and other ingredients. Fish is served too, especially smoked fish.

The favorites are bacon, ham and sausage.

• Bacon. Cook it on a flat griddle, in a heavy skillet, or on a sheet pan in the oven. However it is cooked, drain it on paper towel to take off the extra fat.
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• Canadian-style bacon is very lean and needs little cooking; the slices are usually sautéed briefly. The round slices are served like ham, and eggs Benedict cannot be made without them.
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• Ham. A ham steak is a thick slice, ideal at breakfast. Fully cooked ham only needs to be heated briefly in a sauté pan or on a griddle.
• Breakfast sausage is mostly made from uncured, uncooked meat. It runs from mild to spicy, can be slightly sweet or strongly seasoned with sage, and comes loose, in links or as patties. Links are often part-cooked by steaming, then browned in a sauté pan at service and drained on paper towel.

Griddlecakes and crepes

Pancakes and waffles are griddlecakes, also called griddle breads. They are usually raised with baking soda or baking powder and cooked quickly, with very little fat, on a waffle iron or a very hot griddle. A good one is more than a carrier for butter and syrup: its flavor is rich and its inside light, tender and moist. Batters can be flavored with tangy buckwheat flour, fruit, whole grains or nuts, and both usually come with plain or flavored butter and syrup or fruit compote.

A waffle needs a waffle iron, which gives the grid pattern and the crisp texture. Electric irons come in square, round and even heart shapes. Season the grids well and then never wash them, following the maker's instructions. Belgian waffles are extra light and crisp because they contain whipped egg whites, yeast or both. They are often baked in an iron with very deep grids and served at breakfast, or as a dessert topped with ice cream, whipped cream or fresh fruit.

Crepes are thin, delicate pancakes with no leavening. The batter is a very thin egg batter, cooked in a crepe pan or a small sauté pan heated very hot. Buckwheat flour, cornmeal or other grains can flavor it. Crepes are never served plain. They are filled and garnished with sautéed fruit, scrambled eggs, cheese or vegetables, and can be made ahead, then filled and reheated in the oven. A blintz is a crepe cooked on one side only, then filled with cheese and browned in butter. Serve it with fruit compote, preserves or sour cream.

Drinks

Water, coffee and tea are on almost every beverage menu. They cost the guest little, but a good cup of coffee or tea, or the right bottled water, shapes what a guest thinks of the whole place. Coffee is often the first thing a guest drinks or the last, and tea, hot or iced, often runs right through the meal. These drinks are also important sources of profit, so a cook needs to know how to make and serve them well.

Water. Bottled water is the fastest-growing part of the drinks business, partly because people are more health-minded and partly because they think it is safer. In the United States, bottled water is drinking water sold for people to drink and is regulated by the FDA. It can come from a city supply, a spring or a well. Spring water comes from underground and flows up to the surface on its own. Mineral water must have at least 250 parts per million of dissolved solids, and those minerals often give it its taste.

Bottled water is sold still or sparkling. The sparkle usually comes from added carbon dioxide, which also stops the water spoiling; the more of it, the sharper the taste. Serve bottled water lightly chilled, without ice unless the guest asks.

Coffee. Roasts are named by how dark the beans are taken.

Coffee roasts from light to dark.

Tea. The teas a breakfast or brunch kitchen meets most fall into black, green and oolong.

Teas for the breakfast and brunch menu.