For this meaty lasagne recipe, we draw inspiration from one of Italy's most loved and well-known regions, la Toscana. Differing from the modern Italian breakfast - typically comprising sweet pastries and breads - this dish celebrates Tuscan farmers, whose labour-intensive lifestyle often requires a heartier breakfast, involving meat or leftover soup from the night before (though for obvious reasons, we omit the latter!).
Our Tuscan breakfast lasagne recipe consists of layers of creamy besciamella sauce - known to have originated from Tuscany, as well as crisp and smoky pancetta and meat sausage, and fresh, homemade pasta sheets. We crown our breakfast lasagne with an egg, which lends an extra decadent finish to our sumptuous lasagne. And whilst we wouldn't normally prescribe lasagne for breakfast, we're certainly not opposed to the idea…
Our “breakfast in Tuscany” lasagne recipe
Serves 4-5
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 55 minutes
Calories per serving: 816kcal
Ingredients
For the besciamella
- 600 ml of milk
- 60g plain flour
- 40g butter
- Generous grating of nutmeg
- Salt and black pepper to season
For the lasagne
- 400g high-quality pork sausage meat
- 160g smoked pancetta cubes
- 400g fresh lasagne sheets
- 75g Parmigiano Reggiano to sprinkle over each layer (don’t forget the top)
- 4-5 eggs
Method
Chef’s tip: If you’re making fresh lasagne sheets, prepare your pasta dough in advance of your sauce.
- Heat a large pan over medium. Separate your sausage meat into small pieces, and add these to the pan, moving the pieces continuously, to ensure they cook evenly, and don’t burn. Once fully cooked, remove from the pan and set aside. Leave any rendered fat in the pan.
- In the same pan, add your pancetta, and allow this to fry until crisp. Once cooked, remove the pancetta, and transfer the remaining fat to a saucepan.
To make your besciamella
- Heat the saucepan containing the fat on medium, and add a further 40g of butter. Allow this to melt and combine, before adding around 60g of flour. Whisk until combined and cook on low heat for 1-2 minutes, until a roux is formed.
- Remove from the heat and gradually add the milk, stirring continuously until thickened. Ensure to add only a splash of milk at a time, as adding too much will result in a lumpy béchamel. Season with nutmeg, salt and black pepper to taste, and set aside.
Watch Roberta making a traditional béchamel sauce in our video guide:
To finish off your lasagne
- To assemble the lasagne, ladle a thin layer of the besciamella on the bottom of the baking dish. Top with a layer of lasagne sheets – don’t worry about overlapping sheets here. Follow this with another layer of besciamella – be more generous this time; using the back of the spoon push it right to the edge. Top this with a generous layer of the sausage and pancetta pieces, then sprinkle over a touch of parmesan.
- Repeat these steps (pasta, besciamella, meat and parmesan) until all the sauce and pasta are used up. Aim for around 5 layers of pasta, and don’t forget to top with a generous amount of hard cheese.
- Cook the lasagne for 30-35 minutes. Our Head Chef Roberta recommends covering your dish with aluminium foil for the first 10-15 mins, to ensure that the lasagne doesn't dry out in the oven.
- After this time, remove the lasagne from the oven. Using a knife, cut 4-5 wells into the top of your lasagne, roughly in the centre of each portion. Carefully crack an egg in the centre of the well. Once all the eggs have been added, place the lasagne back in the oven, and cook for a further 5-7 minutes, until the egg whites are set.
- Remove from the oven and leave to stand for at least 5 minutes. To serve, slice into equal-sized portions and finish with freshly shaved Italian hard cheese. Buon appetito.
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