You should only have to go over these once or twice to grasp some of the nuances of this recipe. Hopefully these notes will help you to be successful on the first kick at the can. If you are having problems please contact me through the contact page so we can work this through together and hopefully reach a satisfactory conclusion.
My recipe is based on one that I found on the web. You can find the link here: Links, Sources & Miscellanea. I have doubled that recipe. There are 3 people in my household that have this granola for breakfast and sometimes for snacks. This quantity lasts about a week.
The items below coincide with the steps in the recipe:
You can swap out the nuts and seeds for other ingredients such as walnut pieces, peanut pieces, raw sunflower seeds, etc. You can also change the cinnamon for a spice of your choice. However, if you are using my combination of nuts and seeds, cinnamon works really well.
As per the original recipe, you can substitute coconut oil for the olive oil. You can also use canola oil. I have found that a high quality olive oil works well with the maple syrup. I prefer to use dark or dark amber maple syrup. You may not be able to get these types of syrups so just go with regular maple syrup. However if you can get the dark syrups you probably don't need the vanilla extract.
It is very important that you mix the wet ingredients with the dry very thoroughly. Every piece of the dry ingredients should be coated.
If you have a slow oven then you may want to start the preheat at instruction 1 or 2.
I allow lots of excess for the parchment paper. This keeps your pans clean and is great for pouring the granola into the containers when it has cooled. I crease the parchment paper along the bottom corners of the pan. This keeps the paper in place when you are adding the granola to the pan prior to baking.
You want the granola to bake evenly. This means spreading it out in a thin layer over the whole surface of the pan. Make sure to push it into the corners.
By doubling the original recipe I have two pans of granola to bake. I could bake them separately, but this takes too long. I decided to bake both pans together. My bottom rack in the oven is about at the halfway point. My top rack is about halfway between the bottom rack and the top of the oven. I put one pan on the top rack to the left side and the other pan on the bottom rack to the right side. This arrangement only takes a few minutes longer to bake. My baking time reflects this scenario. The next step explains how I make this work.
While the full baking time is 25 minutes, at 13 minutes I take the top pan out of the oven and move the bottom pan up to the top on the left side. I shut the oven door. I take two metal spatulas and gently flip over the granola on the pan I took out of the oven. I make sure the granola is spread in a thin even layer over the pan and then I return it to the oven to the bottom rack on the right side. While the oven is open I remove the second pan. I close the oven door. I flip the granola and return the pan to the left side of the upper rack. I then set the timer for 12 minutes. (You may have to adjust these times somewhat based on how your oven handles baking.)
I usually make my granola at night so when it is finished baking I leave the pans on the cooling racks overnight and put the cold granola in containers in the morning.
I have included the time frames from the original recipe as around here the granola barely lasts a week!
SERVING SIZES
For myself, I have about a cup of granola along with a sliced banana, frozen wild blueberries, dried cranberries and a sprinkle of cinnamon. My wife and daughter have similar servings but only 1/4 cup of granola.
Please check the Links, Sources & Miscellanea page for information on the ingredients, sources and equipment that I use.