Our Prized Granola Recipe
Save the Maple Trees (The Sequel)
by Richard Conniff
We adapted this recipe, by trial and error, from the “crunchy granola” recipe Mark Bittman published years ago in the New York Times. Some of the adaptations now seem critical, and guests have called it the best granola they’ve ever taste. Please give it a try.
Ingredients
6 cups thick rolled oats (not quick-cooking or instant)
2 cups mixed nuts and seeds: We almost always use pecans, sliced almonds, and, to my initial surprise, pistachios, which add a nice crunch. Bittman also recommends sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, cashews, or chopped walnuts. We never use the walnuts because they give a slightly bitter taste to the recipe. Sometimes we add chia seeds to the nut mix.
1 cup dried unsweetened shredded coconut
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, or to taste
Dash salt
1/2 cup maple syrup, or to taste. (Bittman also recommends honey, but … no.)
1 cup dried cranberries. (Bittman says raisins or chopped dried fruit, optional. Everyone in my family regards raisins as an abomination, but you may feel otherwise.)
Method
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, combine oats, coconut, cinnamon, salt, and maple syrup. Reserve the seeds and nuts, with a little bit of the maple syrup, in a separate bowl. Spread ingredients from the first bowl evenly on two sheet pans and put in oven. Bake for seven minutes or a little longer. Dump both trays back in the mixing bowl, add the nuts, and stir. Spread the combined mix on the two baking sheets and return to the oven. (We found that having the nuts in the mix from the start tended to burn them.) Bake for another 7-10 minutes, until mixture is evenly browned. The browner it gets without burning, says Bittman, the crunchier the granola will be.
2. Remove sheet pans from oven, return to the larger bowl, and add the dried cranberries. After the granola cools to room temperature, transfer to a sealed container and store.
3. We serve this for breakfast with lots of fresh fruit (whatever happens to be in season and available at a reasonable price, but mainly apples, blueberries, bananas, strawberries, or peaches ), with yogurt or milk to taste.
You can vary the recipe at will of course. That’s what recipes are for.
Please let me know in comments if you come up with improvements.