how to make our flax-granola - part two - the bake

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Published on Monday, 24 October 2011 11:50

Written by Super User

Using your big spoon, scoop several hefty globs of flax mix onto the parchment in a row down the middle of the length of parchment from end to end leaving a few inches at either end. Now smush the mix down with the flat end of the spoon and spread out evenly across the parchment. Leave ample room along the edges and do NOT overfill the tray with too much flax-mix.

Depending on how many racks and stones you have for your oven you can do more than one tray. But you may want to leave one rack open for the cranberries that are still in the fridge. Any leftover flax-mix you can return to the fridge but I would recommend baking it off within the next few days - the flax will sprout after several days.

Slide the tray with the flax into the oven and let bake for fifteen minutes.

Remove the tray (use hotpads). Set the tray on your counter workspace.

The gloppy mass of flax mix should have solidified somewhat into a flatish pancake like slab but it will be steaming and hot.

TRICKY ALERT

The job before you now is to remove the mix from the parchment. What we recommend is that you set the tray lengthwise in front of you then grab the two upper corners of the parchment, lift and flip in one quick fluid movement. The flax should still stick to the parchment and stay in place as it flips over. And, once flipped, you should then be able to peel the parchment cleanly off the flax mix. Some flaxseeds may stick to the parchment but you can scrape them off and put them right back into the mix. If the parchment peels off cleanly, congratulations on a good job (or your good luck or whatever you attribute good circumstances in your life to). If, however, the flax mix flew off the parchment and is steaming, hot and sticky all over your apron, your oven and your kitchen floor, well, we offer our sincere apologies and can only hope that this will become one of those, look-back-and-laugh-at-ourselves moments we will all come to so dearly cherish in our declining years....

With the mix hopefully flipped over and in the tray, use your scrapper or dough cutter to separate the mix into chunks. You could simply cut it down the middle and then cut both sides into thirds, separating as you go. We want to open it up and get a sense for how it's doing. If it's feeling somewhat firm, that's great, we're on to the next step. If it's feeling very sloppy and wet, you may need to increase the time for the next step and keep the temp at 250.

If feeling firm, reduce the oven temp to 200 degrees then return the tray to the oven and let bake for ten minutes.

Remove tray. Using your dough cutter or scrapper, flip the chunks over and pile them toward the middle of the tray.

TRICKY ALERT

You will now need to cut and separate the flax mix, pushing it out from the pile toward the sides of the pan. Basically, you want to open the flax mix up - exposing as much of the mix as possible to the warm air in the oven. You don't have to be thorough, just chop and separate and get it to form ridges. What's tricky here is that the flax is hot so you don't want to get your fingers or knuckles into this pile of hot flax. Deftness counts here.

Once chopped and spread, return mix to the oven and let bake for another ten minutes and repeat this process several times, reducing temperature as you go to about 175.

As we do this, the flax is drying out very quickly, and will be much cooler to the touch. It will be progressively easier to manipulate. At this point, we're not so much piling, chopping and spreading the flax about the pan as we are in sculpting and teasing the flax but CAUTION, we don't want to overdo it. We are hoping to manipulate the flax seed into granola like clusters. This may take practice. Too little teasing and the flax will end up like a pile of chunky gravel. Too much teasing and we'll be right back to a pan full of flax seed.

NOTE: You should never have to scrape the flax mix off the pan with much effort. It will stick to the pan but only lightly. If the flax mix is sticking to the point of having to push hard to scrape it free, you will need to turn the oven temp down or remove from the oven a little sooner or both.

This process of teasing the flax mix every five to ten minutes will continue until the flax mix is loose and will shake easily when you shake the pan. At this point, there is still a little bit of moisture within the flax granola clusters but not much. So let's return the tray to the oven, turn the oven off and close the door. Leave for an hour or more. If possible, leave overnight.  When you return and remove the flax, it should be completely dry and ready to eat. We want it light and airy - the clusters should look like little asteroids from flax-granola deep space. We want them to crumble nicely when bitten into. We don't want them too hard or too big or too solid. And that's the trick and it requires time and patience and, yes, a certain amount of skill.

If the clusters are still a bit mushy and soft to the touch, preheat the oven to 200, place the flax mix in the oven, turn the oven off and leave for an hour or more.

And there you have it.

Oh, sorry. I totally forgot the cranberries in the fridge. They are very wet from having been soaked and we want to dry them out as well. But if we left them in the mix, it would take forever to dry the mix out so we separate them and let them dry out on their own. Spread them out on another tray with parchment. I usually put them in the oven sometime around the middle of the bake and leave them in overnight but they do create more moisture in the oven and that can increase the baking time. Since we use a convection oven with high speed fans, this is not such a big problem but a conventional oven might be therefore, it's a good idea to simply bake them at low heat separately, or, if you have a dehydrator, use that.

Once your flax-granola mix is baked up, add all the ingredients you want.

Voila. You're good to go. Unless of course you're still cleaning up that messy flax that came off the parchment and flew all over the kitchen. Sorry....

Doug

e me with your comments and pics and I'll post them - sorry, I don't know how to turn the comments option on, on this blog site.