Sausage and Chard Mini Breakfast Galettes

Each Thursday, Emily Vikre (a.k.a. fiveandspice) will be sharing a new way to love breakfast -- because breakfast isn't just the most important meal of the day. It's also the most awesome.

Today: You can find recipe inspiration in all kinds of places. Start with these savory galettes, wrapped up in a new kind of pie crust.

Sometimes recipes have a story -- perhaps from standing on a step-stool and helping grandma in the kitchen, or a fantastic meal cooked for a best friend’s birthday, or a memorable restaurant when you were studying abroad junior year of college. Sometimes the only story a recipe has is that your mother calls you up and says, “Hey, I have an idea for a breakfast recipe for you that I found in the paper this morning. If you’re around, you should stop by and I’ll give it to you.”

And so, because you are out doing errands anyway, you stop by and she hands you a photo cut from a restaurant review in the "Taste" section. The review is probably from a restaurant you’ve heard of and would like to go to, but that you’ve never been to. The photo is of something captioned, “spinach-fennel sausage breakfast hand pie.” And at this point you may say, “Yeah, that does look like something good for breakfast. I’m going to try to make one.”

But, because you’ve never been to the restaurant or seen a recipe for these hand pies, you might off-road it, making just exactly the small sausage breakfast pie that you most want at that moment, with mild but still punchy Italian sausage, leafy ribbons of chard, and the most perfect crust -- impossibly buttery, meltingly flaky, punctuated with crunchy nubbins of cornmeal. It’s not much of a story, but it could happen.

More: Learn all about cornmeal and how it compares to grits, polenta, and masa.

These galettes are not something you’re likely to wake up and bake up for breakfast. Brunch maybe, but not breakfast. However, they keep nicely, and they reheat well and quickly in a toaster or regular oven. So you can make them ahead and eat them for breakfast later, and you’ll be like one of those crafty, motivated people on Pinterest who apparently make and stash gargantuan batches of mini quiches to have on hand for breakfast. Except you will have made a batch of mini galettes, which may well be even better. End of story.

Sausage and Chard Mini Breakfast Galettes

Makes 6 hefty palm-sized galettes

1 cup all-purpose flour
1⁄4 cup coarse cornmeal (a.k.a. grits or polenta)
1⁄4 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter cut into small pieces
1⁄4 cup plain Greek yogurt
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1⁄4 cup ice cold water
Olive oil, for frying the sausage
1⁄2 pound mild Italian sausage
1 tablespoon butter
1 bunch of chard, well washed, trimmed, and chopped into fine ribbons
2 tablespoons maple syrup
Salt and pepper
3 large eggs, whisked together

See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.

Photos by Emily Vikre