House granola recipe

Ok, I've baked this several times now and it seems to be a hit, so I'm gonna post.

The big breakthrough was when we went to the Palestinian grocery up the way and discovered ✨ baking dates ✨ — a compressed brick of middlin' quality date paste that sells for comically cheap compared to fancy dates. Exactly what I wanted from the start?! I just didn't know what to call it or where to obtain it.

Bootleg Crunch

Gear

• Oven at 225° F
• Food processor
• Two half-sheet or "jelly roll" size baking sheets

Liquids

• 200g dates or baking dates
• 150g boiling water
• 30g honey

Stuff

• 666g rolled oats
• 200g nuts — house's choice, unsalted, chopped
  • I do 50g each of almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, and pecans. You do you, I know hazelnuts are controversial.
  • Raw and pre-roasted both seem to work fine. 🤷🏽
• 150g seeds - house's choice, unsalted
  • I do 30g sesame, 60g each of raw sunflower and raw pepitas.

How

• Pre-heat oven to 225°.
• Chop the dates or date-brick, add honey, and pour boiling water over the chunks in a glass bowl. Let that mess sit for 5-10m while you gather all the other stuff.
• Chop nuts.
• Weigh out all the dry stuff into a large bowl.
• Put the hot date mess into a food processor and blend it into a runny brown slurry.
• Squeegee the date slurry out into the dry stuff and mix well.
• Spread it all out onto two half-sheet baking pans.
• Bake for an hour at 225°. Every 20m, stir the granola around and spread it back out, and swap which rack the pans are on.
• Let cool, put into large jars to store.

Credit where due, this was an attempt to bootleg the Blue Heron Bakery (Olympia) Rebel Crunch granola, which lists only oats, dates, sesame, and sunflower as ingredients. I've been eating that stuff since childhood and there's no better granola at the store... but sometimes it's not AT the store, and I wanted a backup.

Ruth says she likes this bootleg a bit better, and you already know that stacking more nuts and seeds on is the easiest way to make me happy.