My Mom makes the greatest granola of all time. No, really. Part of what makes it so good is that it has the ideal balance of sweet and savory—sweetness from honey and savory from toasted oats. But what truly makes it great is all the clusters. My Mom would make a batch and store it in a big tupperware container on top of the fridge. When no one was looking, I would take it down and shake it so all the clusters rose to the top and I could pick them out. It was the gustatory equivalent of panning for gold.
When it came time to develop a granola recipe for Basically, I had to make a few upgrades (pecans instead of walnuts, coconut oil instead of vegetable oil), but keeping the clusters was paramount. Throughout the development process, I picked up these tricks for coaxing those little nuggets out of any recipe. If the cluster quotient of your favorite granola recipe could use a boost, try the following:
Alex Lau
•Add an egg white. As good as my mom’s recipe is, I couldn’t not swap out a few ingredients in favor of flavors that were more my speed (maple syrup for the honey, for example). However, when I did this the clusters disappeared. In order to get them back, the fix was simple: I had to add a couple of egg whites. The whites act as a kind of glue that binds the ingredients together. To ensure that the egg whites coat all the ingredients, I beat them with a whisk until foamy and increased in volume, which makes it much easier to fold into the granola.
•Add ingredients that naturally stick together. My mom’s recipe, and subsequently this one, crucially include two special ingredients not often found in granola recipes: bran cereal flakes and wheat germ. Not only do these pump up the nutrition, but they each serve a special function in forming clusters. The bran flakes act like little rafts onto which all the ingredients can pile, forming the base of the clusters. The wheat germ mixes with the egg white and maple syrup and makes a delicious mortar that fuses the oats and other ingredients to the bran flakes.
•Stop stirring halfway through. You need to stir the granola as it bakes to encourage even toasting. But, about halfway through the total bake time, just let it be. As the sugars caramelize, they cause the ingredients to stick together and eventually form those oh-so-desirable clusters. Stirring breaks up the clusters, so leave it alone. THEN, Let it cool on the baking sheet undisturbed. Once the granola is out of the oven, wait until it’s completely cooled and set before you break it up. This produces clusters of all different sizes and shapes, some large and some small—perfect for picking out when no one is looking.
