Small Batch Granola
The Oats
The foundational ingredient of any granola is the humble oat.
When it came time to source oats for our small batch granola, we were hardly inspired by the banal, commodity-grade rolled and steel-cut oats that line grocery store shelves.
Thankfully, the fine folks at Anson Mills came to the rescue, offering us their Handmade Toasted Stone-Cut Oats. For more than a decade, Anson Mills has served as their own seedsman for these difficult-to-grow landrace peelcorn oats, painstakingly selecting seed from each harvest for the following growing season.
The truth is that these organic, new crop oats are a world away from any other oats. The team at Anson Mills puts it best: "these oats have nuances of clean oatiness, heightened minimality, deep nuttiness, fresh field flavors, and a wide array of warming spice and caramel grain notes that are so superior to the fairly dull flavor profile of common oats, that we simply can't resist the challenge year in, year out."
I promise you, there's just nothing quite like these oats out there.
The Honey
Just a touch of sweetness. That's all that I wanted. Any more and we'd mask the flavors of the new crop oats, Ceylon cinnamon, and ginger.
The only sweetener in our small batch granola is first-pull spring and summer honey from our friends at Thistle & Bee.
This Mid-South honey is incredibly delicate and highly floral, lending a 'barely sweet' feel to the granola while helping bind together all of the other ingredients into crunchy clusters.
The Spices
When I first tried some of the spices from The Reluctant Trading Experiment my mind was blown.
The Ceylon cinnamon was chock-full of bright citrus and floral notes. The green cardamom pods had notes of grapefruit, mint, and licorice. And don't even get me started on their Tellicherry Black peppercorns...
Scott and Divakar source small batches of unique spices from across India, and we're fortunate to use their Ceylon cinnamon and ginger in our small batch granola.
The Ceylon cinnamon is sourced from a 250-year-old cinnamon estate in Kannur, India. But how does it taste?
"Someone said that tasting Ceylon cinnamon is like listening to your favorite vinyl record on a $4,000 stereo system, while Cassia cinnamon is like listening to an MP3 version in the car. I don't have a stereo like that, but I can imagine."
The Salt
The little details matter.
In the case of our small batch granola, what ties together the spicy caramel notes of our landrace oats, the toasted coconut, and the citrus zing from the cinnamon is a touch of sea salt.
And not just any sea salt:
Trapani Sale di Gucciardo.
On the picturesque Trapanese coastline dotted with windmills, shallow pools and white salt pyramids, the summer salt harvest is a tradition that dates back thousands of years, since at least the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Gucciardo family produces sea salt in Trapani using a salt mill built in 1884 in Trapani’s natural reserve, protected by the World Wide Fund for Nature, home to migratory birds like purple herons and grey parrots.
Each spring, the salt pans are filled with seawater, which is left to evaporate in the heat of the Sicilian summer sun. As the water evaporates and the salt starts to crystallize, the fiore del sale are the young salt crystals that form on the top. The salt is completely unrefined and untreated.