Serves 4 to 6
The amount of bacon you can cook at one time will vary depending on the size of the bacon slices and the size of your baking sheet.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
No breakfast is complete without a side of crispy, salty bacon, but to easily cook a whole pound at once (and salvage our stovetop), we decided to make use of the oven. Low heat rendered the fat but didn’t crisp the bacon strips, and they burned before rendering if the oven was too hot. 400 degreed turned out to be the sweet spot. Lining the baking sheet with aluminum foil before cooking makes for easy cleanup.

Serves 6
If you don’t have buttermilk on hand, whisk 1 tablespoon of lemon juice into 1 1/4 cups of milk and let it stand until slightly thickened, about 10 minutes.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Hearty buttermilk biscuits topped with creamy, spicy sausage gravy are a Southern staple, but many biscuits recipes feature hockey-puck baked goods soaked with pasty, flavorless sauce. We wanted our Biscuits and Sausage Gravy recipe to turn out big, fluffy biscuits with maximum lift, so we used a considerable amount of flour and increased the amount of baking powder and baking soda. Kneading the dough built structure so the biscuits were sturdy enough to stand up to the gravy. In the gravy, our tasters preferred milk to half-and-half or cream, which were overly rich. Bumping up the amount of sausage in our gravy recipe ensured plenty of meat in every bite. Ground fennel and sage supplement the seasonings in the sausage and, along with a generous dose of black pepper, give the gravy—and our Biscuits and Sausage Gravy recipe—some serious flavor.

Makes 12 buns
You’ll need the juice and zest of one orange for this recipe. If the dough becomes too soft to work with at any point, refrigerate it until it’s firm enough to easily handle.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Instead of using complicated croissant dough for our Morning Buns, we switched to a quick puff pastry recipe. When we tried to incorporate the butter into our dough with a rolling pin, we wound up creating a mess. To streamline the process, we sealed quarter-inch butter slices in a zipper-lock bag with the dry ingredients before rolling everything right in the bag. We produced multiple layers in one step by rolling unfilled dough into a rectangle, then into a cylinder, and gently patting it flat. Better still: Cooling the butter required just one short rest in the freezer.

A packet of yeast and a little sugar added to the dry ingredients gave the cooked dough the yeasty flavor of a croissant. A blend of half brown and half white sugar added a subtle molasses flavor to the filling. Adding orange zest to the filling and orange juice to the dough provided a bright citrus aroma and flavor.

Makes 12 muffins
A combination of cake flour and whole-wheat flour makes a muffin with a hearty, but tender, crumb.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/to-your-health/2011/07/the-secret-to-fluffy-whole-wheat-muffins/

Makes 6 toasts
You will need two heavy-bottomed rimmed baking sheets for this recipe; our favorite is the Wear-Ever Half Size Heavy Duty Sheet Pan (13 Gauge) by Vollrath. If you don’t have a biscuit cutter, cut the toast holes with a sturdy drinking glass.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
To adapt this classic skillet breakfast to the oven, we start by toasting bread (with a hole cut out) on both sides in a hot oven. A preheated, buttered baking sheet ensures that the bread browns without sticking, and cracking the eggs onto the hot pan helps them set up right away, preventing the whites from running all over. Adding a second, room-temperature baking pan to the setup acts as insulation, so when the eggs are returned to the oven they cook quickly but gently for a tender white and runny yolk every time.

Serves 2
Although this recipe will work with any electric mixer, a handheld mixer makes quick work of whipping such a small amount of cream. If using a standing mixer in step 1, transfer the whipped cream to a separate bowl, wipe out the mixing bowl, and then beat the eggs in the clean bowl.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Typical omelets make a fine breakfast or light dinner, but diner-style omelets can satisfy the biggest of appetites. We wanted to make our cheese omelet to be impossibly tall and fluffy and loaded with cheese and other fillings, but the recipes we tried left us with flat and flabby eggs. Incorporating air into the eggs with a mixer made our cheese omelet tall and fluffy. The cream’s fat made it impossible to whip air into the eggs, but we found a way to work around this: We whipped the cream first and then folded it into the whipped eggs. After letting the bottom of the omelet set on the stovetop, we popped the skillet into a preheated oven, and just six minutes later had a puffy, fluffy omelet, cooked to perfection.

Makes 8

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS: This traditional scone has a biscuit-like texture obtained by using both butter and heavy cream. The easiest and most reliable approach to mixing the butter into the dry ingredients is to use a food processor fitted with the metal blade. Resist the urge to eat the scones hot out of the oven. Letting them cool for at least 10 minutes firms them up and improve their texture.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/bake-it-better/2013/05/secrets-to-cream-scones-with-currants/

Serves 4
It’s important to follow visual cues, as pan thickness will affect cooking times. If using an electric stove, heat one burner on low heat and a second on medium-high heat; move the skillet between burners for temperature adjustment. If you don’t have half-and-half, substitute 8 teaspoons of whole milk and 4 teaspoons of heavy cream. To dress up the dish, add 2 tablespoons of chopped parsley, chives, basil, or cilantro or 1 tablespoon of dill or tarragon to the eggs after reducing the heat to low.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Scrambled eggs should be a foolproof, go-to breakfast. Yet surprisingly, we’ve successfully created our ideal scrambled eggs only a handful of times. More often than not, they’re tough and dry. For moist and fluffy eggs with soft, big curds, we found it necessary to cook them over high heat, which creates enough steam to properly puff the eggs. Salt helps produce tender curds while gentle beating avoids a tough scramble. The addition of half-and-half provided just enough richness without making the eggs dense and a couple extra yolks boosted egg flavor. Lowering the heat at the end of cooking ensured the eggs didn’t overcook.

Makes about 16 (4-inch) pancakes

Getting the skillet hot enough before making the pancakes is key.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/bake-it-better/2012/05/secrets-to-perfect-pancakes/

Serves 6 to 8
Don’t skip the baking soda in this recipe. It’s critical for home fries with just the right crisp texture.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Making home fries the traditional way takes about an hour of standing over a hot skillet, after which you get only three servings at most. We wanted a quicker, more hands-off method for making a larger amount. To speed things up, we developed a hybrid cooking technique: First, we parboil diced russet potatoes, and then we coat them in oil and cook them in a very hot oven. We discovered that boiling the potatoes with baking soda quickly breaks down their exterior while leaving their insides nearly raw, ensuring home fries with a crisp, brown crust and a moist, fluffy interior. We added diced onions in the last 20 minutes of oven time and finished the home fries with chives to reinforce the onion flavor.