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A bowl of crunchy homemade granola at breakfast
  • Batch for 10 days
  • No refined sugar

How do you make homemade granola really crunchy?

low-temperature baking and cooling without touching it

By Bastien Delorme 1 min read

Prep
10 min
Total
45 min
Calories
285
Difficulty
Very easy

In short

  1. The crunch comes from a slow bake at 150 °C, not a hot one: any higher and the honey burns before the oats have dried.
  2. The ratio that holds: 300 g of oats to 80 g of liquid sweetener and 50 g of fat, a little over 40 % wetting.
  3. Big clusters form by not stirring for the last fifteen minutes and letting the tray cool untouched.
  4. Dried fruit goes in after baking, never before: it hardens and turns bitter in the oven.

Ingredients

For 10 servings
  • rolled oats 300 g
  • chopped almonds and hazelnuts 100 g
  • pumpkin and sunflower seeds 60 g
  • honey or maple syrup 80 g
  • coconut oil or neutral oil 50 g
  • ground cinnamon 1 tsp
  • fine salt 1 pinch
  • dried fruit, after baking 80 g

Instructions

  1. Preheat to 150 °C

    Preheat the oven to 150 °C fan. The low temperature is the whole trick: it dries the oats instead of caramelising the honey on the surface.

  2. Mix dry and wet

    Combine the oats, nuts, seeds, cinnamon and salt in a large bowl. Melt the honey with the oil, pour it over the dry mix and stir until everything is evenly damp, with no dry patches.

  3. Spread and press down

    Spread on a lined tray in a layer 1 cm thick at most, then press it down with the back of a spoon. A pressed layer bakes into sheets, and sheets become clusters.

  4. Bake, stirring twice

    Bake for 35 minutes. Stir at 10 minutes and again at 20 minutes, pressing it back down each time, then leave it alone. The granola should be golden, not brown.

  5. Cool without touching it

    Take the tray out and let it cool at least 45 minutes without stirring anything. Break it into big pieces by hand, add the dried fruit, and store in an airtight jar.

Good to know

Granola is only crunchy once cold. Straight out of the oven it is still soft, because the sugar in the honey is liquid when hot and only crystallises as it cools. That change of state, not the baking itself, is what welds the oats into clusters: stirring during that phase reduces a whole batch to crumbs.

A good bag of granola costs between 4 and 7 euros for 400 grams. The homemade version comes to around 2.50 euros for 600 grams, and above all it lets you choose the sugar level, which climbs fast towards 20 % in supermarket brands.

The only real skill fits in one sentence: do not touch the granola until it is cold.

Frequently asked questions

How do you make homemade granola really crunchy?

Bake it at 150 °C for 35 minutes in a pressed-down layer one centimetre thick, then let it cool completely on the tray without touching it. The crunch appears as it cools, when the sugar in the honey crystallises and welds the oats together. Use 300 g of oats, 80 g of honey and 50 g of oil.

Why is my granola not crunchy?

Almost always because it was stirred or tasted while still warm, before the sugar had crystallised. The other causes are too thick a layer, which traps moisture in the middle, or jarring it while still warm: the steam softens it overnight.

How long does homemade granola keep?

About ten days in an airtight jar at room temperature, provided it was completely cold when stored. After that it is still edible but loses its crunch. It freezes very well for three months.

Can it be made with no sugar at all?

With no sweetener the oats do not stick together and the result is loose toasted oats, not granola. The minimum for clusters is around 50 g of honey or syrup per 300 g of oats, a third less than this recipe.