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APOLLONIA POILANE: In this granola recipe,
we have plain wheat sourdough loaf, rye bread.
You have puffed rice.
You have honey.
You have nuts.
These are grains that have been soaked and cooked by the honey.
The texture is much tighter, but lighter
than traditional granola recipes,
because I don't use any oil in it.
I really view this as a recipe to turn
the leftovers of your pantry into something really fabulous
for breakfast or for a 4:00 PM snack.
Many, many moons ago, I read an article
on how to bake granola in "The New York Times."
And that recipe called for different cereal grain flakes.
And I had a little bit of stale bread at home.
And I thought, there isn't that much
of a difference between breadcrumb and grain flakes.
So I started experimenting, really testing the limits of,
how can you work a bread granola in a different way?
How can you enrich that recipe?
How can you make it your own?
And I would encourage you, while I'm
doing a very purist recipe here and using just plain wheat
and rye sourdough loaves, to explore
adding different nuts, different dried fruit.
It really is about your personal blend and also the ingredients
you have at hand.
This recipe allows you to not waste the leftover bread.
You can tell when bread is dry when you cut through it
and your knife is having a hard time.
You'll notice these big cracks.
If you can't break it in your hand so easily,
that's a sense of dryness that a lot of people
would take for bread to be discarded.
I view it as the opportunity to use bread as an ingredient.
In this recipe, we have wheat sourdough loaf, some rye bread,
some almonds and some hazelnuts, puffed rice.
We have a little bit of salt and honey.
The fruit and yogurt are for tasting.
So for this recipe, I cut the bread
to make the food processors work easier.
Do watch out for your hands.
This is typically a moment where the knife tends to slip.
Here, I'm demonstrating this using
both the wheat and the rye.
The rye loaf tends to be a little coarser.
So cut it into thinner pieces.
Say you want to make a batch of just granola.
And you only have fresh bread.
In that case, cut the bread in slices and dry them out.
Because the food processor will have a really hard time
breaking down big chunks of bread into small pieces.
So I'll start off with a low speed
and then just work up a faster speed as I need it.
You can use the pulsing.
It really depends on your blender.
And you need a good blender for this one.
I've blended it for exactly 2 seconds here.
And I'm getting a little bit of crumb.
I still have big pieces.
Once I see how it reacts, then I can move into faster speeds.
Now, if you have a blender that's really crummy--
pun intended-- you could just remove this, use a bowl,
sort through the bigger pieces, and start over again
with the larger pieces in there.
Perfect.
All right, so we have pieces here of very different sizes.
We have the one that really looks like breadcrumb.
The larger pieces are absolutely fine,
because those will dry out and will actually not be
that big under your tooth.
So I'm going to add the nuts here.
I like to use untoasted just to enhance and boost
their individual flavor.
You can toast your almonds yourself.
It takes a few minutes in the oven.
If you want to buy them already toasted, that's fine.
Just take them unsalted.
So we have the breadcrumb.
We have the toasted nuts.
And we're going to process this to blend it together.
So I have different sizes here.
And this is the biggest sizes that we want to have.
The small ones I'm not going to dig through.
They're already blended into the bread.
All right, so I'm going to add the puffed rice.
You can mix it by hand or mix it using a spatula.
I'm going to add a little bit of salt. Just personal preference.
So in this recipe, I don't use any oil.
So you won't have the shiny granola
that we're used to seeing.
I only use honey.
So the important thing here is to have quality honey.
Try and use one that's not creamy.
The creamier honeys, the texture tends to solidify faster.
Now, the amount of honey you put in is somewhat discretionary.
But the idea is to have enough honey to bind
the texture together while still keeping some looseness.
If you want a granola that's really chunky,
then put more honey.
If you put less, you'll have a grainier one.
With one that's more grainy, you'll
be able to put it over a yogurt.
And with granola that's courser, you
can have them as a little granola bites.
So it's coming together.
You should have a feeling that the honey is spread out
throughout the bowl.
You can try so many ingredients in this recipe.
Dried fruit, dried figs, dried apricots, currants.
You can turn the leftovers of your pantry
into something really fabulous for breakfast or for a 4:00 PM
snack.
So I'm going to put this granola in this pan.
This is going to bake for about 35 to 40 minutes.
And throughout the bake, I'm taking this granola out
of the oven every 10, 15 minutes, max.
I'm going to crush the texture and the crust that's
forming here, the bind that the honey is providing
to these different textures and flavors,
with this wooden spatula to create
the size of the granola I want.
One thing here is, if you have a large bowl of granola,
is to not go for more than about two fingers in height,
so that the honey has time to melt and bind the ingredients
together before you crush it.
And you don't going to bake it for more than 40 minutes,
because otherwise the different elements will just
be too cooked.
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So we're about 10 minutes into the baking.
And we're going to cut through the texture.
You can hear the sound.
It's like, crunchy, right?
And color-wise, it's this golden light cinnamon-y color.
That's good, too.
You can still see the puffed rice.
Now that I crushed these pieces, I can put it back into the oven
and carry on baking it.
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So when we take it out, here we're
looking for this matte golden syrup look.
The white puffed rice grains are still white-ish.
And that is an indication that it's not overcooked.
You still have the same crunchy sound, so that's good.
And it has a matte color.
But it's not overbaked.
Now, this granola, once it's cooled,
you can store it for about three months in a dry container.
I will have it typically for breakfast on yogurt
with some fresh fruit.
And voila.
This is a wonderful way to start your morning.
You can also use this as a topping for an ice cream.
Most people think that dry bread is an unfortunate situation.
I really view it as an opportunity
to turn that dry bread into a new product,
whether it's a bread granola, whether it's
pain perdu, using hydration you can give a new life
to a dry piece of bread.
Mmm.
This is yummy.
It's rich.
It's full of textures and flavors.
There really is nothing better than homemade granola.
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