Basic granola

2021-03-07

Status: Beta

Makes: about two liters

Takes: about 3 hours start to finish

Oats have been easier to get than good granola recently, so I’ve taken to making my own. This is remixed from a friend’s recipe.

Ingredients

• 425g rolled oats. (NOT instant, quick, steel-cut)
• 225g buttermilk (about 1 cup) or 1:1 yogurt:whole-milk.
• 4oz stick butter, melted
• Oat flavorings group, can be combined in a bowl:
  • 200g sugar
  • 1/2 tsp or 2g kosher salt
  • 1 tsp cinnamon, or other spices of your choice. A bit of vanilla goes a long way here.
• Nuts Group: about 200g of nuts and seeds, your choice, combined. One example:
  • 150g blanched slivered almonds
  • handful sunflower seeds
• 1tsp neutral oil for tossing nuts
• pinch of kosher salt
• Fruit Group: 150-200g of small dried fruit (I use a mix of cranberries and chopped dates, myself)

Procedure

Initial prep:

• Melt butter. Microwave is fine.
• Make buttermilk substitute if necessary.
• In a medium bowl, combine oats, buttermilk, melted butter. Stir to combine.
• Cover with a towel and set aside.
• Wait 20 minutes, then check that oats have soaked up all the goo. (They probably have.)

More prep:

• Stir in Oat Flavorings Group. Re-cover. Set aside.
• Set 30m timer.
• Wait about 10 minutes.

Prepare the nuts:

• Start oven preheating to 350F
• Pour the Nuts Group onto a parchment-lined half sheet.
• Wait for oven to finish preheating.

Bake the nuts:

• Bake the pan of nuts for about 10 minutes or until browning is starting.
• Pull pan of nuts and dump nuts into a medium bowl (same one you used for the oats is fine, maybe wipe out any liquid with a towel). Keep the parchment-lined pan for reuse.
• Reduce oven to 300F
• Toss bowl of nuts with oil and sprinkle with salt.
• Add Fruit Group to bowl of nuts.
• Wait for 30 minute timer you set earlier to go off. (It probably has by now.)

Bake the granola:

• Check: sugar should be stuck to oats and whole mix loosened up a bit.
• Scrape oats onto parchment-lined half sheet, spread into an even layer. Compress a little bit to encourage clumping.
• Bake, stirring every 25 minutes, until golden brown and dry (about 1h40m, or 4x 25m intervals)
  • I stir by using a metal spatula to flip sections over.

Finish:

• Dump mixins on top of oaks on half sheet. Stir until distributed.
• Allow to cool (30-45 minutes).
• Transfer into airtight container.
  • This is hard to do without dumping granola all over your kitchen. I suggest moving portions of the granola with a spatula until there’s enough free space to grab the parchment paper and use it as a chute.