Granola

For a brief period, I thought I'd get healthy and fit by eating a lot more granola (exercise notwithstanding). The stuff I found at markets, even expensive ones didn't quite do it for me. And Hellz No was I going to pay $10/lb for some Tartines "brick oven baked" granola. I'm saving that money for the croissants & eclairs.

So I sought to make my own granola. A google search quickly led me to this guy David Lebovitz who made a granola w/ apple sauce. I adhered to the recipe thoroughly my first time around, then started to deviate and explore a bit more adding more of other things to increase the flavor and texture complexity of the product. What you have below is more or less what I use now, adding an old school ingredient, sorghum, to add more iron and flavor into the mix. All measurements are approximate. It's granola, folks. You can't really mess it up aside from burning it.

Ingredients

DRY STUFF
7 cups rolled oats
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2-3 cups of raw chopped up nuts. I prefer almonds. I tried pecans and they turned too soft, eg. left the granola w/o any bite.
1 cup raw sunflower seeds
1 cup raw pumpkin seeds
(I used to add black sesame seeds, but my friend didn't like it as it floated on top of your milk or whatever. She said it made it look like ants. So now I omit it.)
WET STUFF
3 tsp vegetable oil
2/3 cup sorghum syrup
2/3 cup honey
3/4 cup apple sauce

your mom

Directions

Preheat oven to 300ºF.

Wet Stuff - Mix in a saucepan or somesuch, then let it simmer. In the meantime mix all the dry ingredients together; I suggest using the biggest mixing bowl you can find.

Once the wet stuff has started to simmer, add it to the dry mix. Mix both thoroughly until the dry stuff is equally coated.

Spread a layer of the mixture about 3/4 inch thick on cookie sheets. Place in oven.
IMPORTANT: Check back every 15 mins and agitate the mix so that things cook evenly and nothing gets too brown too fast. Total baking time should be around 50 mins, but could vary depending on how thick you lay on your layers. Things should be done when the granola is of a color a bit darker than honey, though it's really up to you how deep of a flavor you prefer.

Once baked to a golden brown, I add dried cranberries, currants, etc. into the mix. Sometimes I'll add shaved coconut flakes. If you do that, add it to the mix 5-10 mins before the end of bake time.

55 minutes