Homemade Granola, REALLY

Remember when I blogged about fruitcakes and how I like to know what's in them before I'll eat a slice? Well, I'm the same way about granola. I'm suspect of the sugary-as-dessert, expensive stuff you buy in a box in the cereal aisle of the grocery and even of the anemic-looking stuff from the bulk section of Whole Foods. A few years ago I started making homemade granola from a recipe in Breakfast Lunch Tea/Rose Bakery. I'd bag it up in cute little cellophane bags and send it to my kids for Valentine's Day (being heart-healthy and all). It is very good granola, but the recipe is a bit complicated and the ingredient list is long.  

A month or so ago I ran across another granola recipe on one of the cooking blogs I like: Orangette. The writer intrigued me when she wrote:

What sets this granola apart, I think, is its texture. It's so light and crisp that it actually shatters between your teeth. This is not the kind of drudgery that makes your jaw ache halfway through the bowl. It's mostly composed of the usuals - oats, nuts, and seeds - but what makes it special is that they're bound together by a dark slurry of maple syrup, brown sugar, and olive oil, and that slurry that caramelizes in the oven to form a thin, crunchy lacquer over each nub and bit.

I had to give it a try. I made one batch and then made four more. Then I kind of forgot about it until last week in Baltimore when I ordered granola with yogurt and fruit and immediately realized that my new recipe was ten times better. So, this week, I made another batch. And I'm considering making another one today.

Saturday morning breakfast on the back porch: Greek Yogurt with local honey, raspberries and homemade granola

Here's the recipe:

Olive Oil and Maple Granola
Adapted from Nekisia Davis, Early Bird Foods, and Food 52

300 grams (3 cups) rolled oats
125 grams (1 cup) raw hulled pumpkin seeds
130 grams (1 cup) raw hulled sunflower seeds
50 grams (1 cup) unsweetened coconut chips
135 grams (1 ¼ cup) raw pecans, whole or chopped
85 grams (packed ½ cup) light brown sugar
1 tsp. kosher salt
175 ml (¾ cup) maple syrup, preferably Grade B
120 ml (½ cup) olive oil
Dried cherries, optional

Preheat the oven to 300°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, combine the oats, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, coconut chips, pecans, light brown sugar, and salt. Stir to mix. Add the olive oil and maple syrup, and stir until well combined. Spread the mixture in an even layer on the prepared sheet pan. Bake, stirring every 15 minutes, until the granola is golden brown and toasted, about 45 minutes. Remove the granola from the oven, and season with more salt to taste. Cool completely on a wire rack. If you'd like, stir in some dried cherries. Store in an airtight container.

Yield: about 7 cups

The author notes that the mixture will keep for a month in an airtight container. But not if you leave it out on the counter and unscrew the jar and eat a handful every time you walk past it, like I do.

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So, that's how I make homemade granola. But as I was making it, I realized that it is not completely far-fetched to think that I could make REALLY homemade granola, from the harvest of Farm Dover.

I googled "growing oats" and think we could figure out a way to grow a half-acre of oats, which is a lot of oats. I'll have pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds from our garden. Ed and I planted two pecan trees this past weekend. Unfortunately, we will need to wait 8-10 years for our first harvest. We even have a number of maple trees on the place, so tapping them for syrup is not out of the question. The dried cherries will come from our two cherry trees – Maggie has built a food dehydrator that I bet she will let me borrow. That just leaves salt, olive oil, brown sugar, and coconut chips.

When I told Ed of my plan to REALLY make homemade granola, he joked that if global warming continues, we might well be able to grow olives, sugar cane, and coconuts right here on Farm Dover.