Sugarpie honeybunch
A lovely grownup sourdough granola (recipe included), and a bemused look back at a life less sweetened.
Like so many humans across the globe, I grew up eating Heinz baked beans.
I remember those rusty reddish beans as being a little bit sweet, a little bit savory, and generally inoffensive to a picky kid’s palate. I particularly enjoyed smushing them, along with their juices, into the mashed potatoes before eating. Faintly pink, lumpy-beany mashed potatoes: A treasured Thursday night staple, in my household.
But then I grew up, and canned baked beans fell by the wayside. Foodie that I’ve always been, I would now and then make real baked beans just for fun—meaning actual dried beans, long-baked in a simmering oven pot, with other richly flavorful ingredients like molasses and vinegar. Proper beans. Yummy, balanced sweet-tangy-salty-savory beans with real depth of flavor.
I did not re-encounter Heinz (or any other brand) of tinned baked beans until I came to live in the UK. Where beans on toast is a definite thing. And holy mother of whatzit, have those beans changed in the intervening decades. Now they’re full-on bean candy.
As we all know, it’s not just baked beans that have followed this sweetness trend. Seemingly just about every type of commercially produced food, whether that food ought to have sugar in it—garlic pesto, anyone?—or not, is now a sugarpalooza. Everything has that peculiar backnote of sweetness, no matter how out of place it may be.
I don’t get it. I don’t understand this ever-increasing preference for hyper-sweetened foods. Do you?
Or maybe it’s not a preference at all. I can’t tell if processed food manufacturers are genuinely responding to actual customer desire for more and more sugar in absolutely everything…or if the tail is wagging the dog here, and customers are buying super-sweetened foods simply because that’s all there is on the shelves.
Who can say for sure. Maybe it’s a bit of both.
I grew up in a diabetic household, so sugar was always used somewhat sparingly (compared to other households), even in desserts. Cake? Yes, an austere, unadorned single-layer cake now and then. But frosting? Never. Quit asking.
(Remember those TV commercials for Duncan Hines boxed chocolate layer cake mix— oh, that deep, dark, tall and tender crumb! Ooo, those richly sensuous curlicues of intensely chocolatey frosting! To me that gooey slice of layer cake looked like the absolute pinnacle of deliciousness, the most mouth-watering dessert in the whole entire world, bar none. I never got to taste one…which was probably just as well.)
And needless to say, my pleas for Count Chocula breakfast cereal went unfulfilled. It was Rice Krispies or nothing. Get used to it.
And get used to it, I did. Because in my household, it was extremely, visibly self evident: Sugar is not good for us.
We all know this, right? Our bodies actually do require salt for proper metabolic function…but sugar? When it comes to its effect on our bodies, sugar’s only function, as far as I can see, is to keep the health care industry in business.
But let’s get to the main point of this ultra-sweetened trip down memory lane: Granola.
Now I know granola has a (completely undeserved) reputation for being good for you. (Ok, maybe it’s good for you, compared to eating a bowl of Count Chocula. But that’s about it.)
It’s only if you go all the way back to granola’s muesli-like beginnings in the late 19th century—when it consisted basically of a bowlful of toasted grains, nuts and fruits, doused in milk—that it might have held any legitimate health food claims.
No matter what anyone imagines nowadays, toasty-crunchy granola as we know it, has never been an actual healthy food in its own right, as one glance at even the most authentic oldschool-1970s-Birkenstock granola recipe would surely tell you.
It’s because of those tasty, clumpy clusters of golden brown goodness. They don’t just happen all by themselves.
Waaay too much oil and a fairly shocking amount of honey, or maple, or sugar syrup is needed, simply to convince those clusters of disparate ingredients to stick together. Granola is one of those recipes that is constrained by physical requirement; try to use less oil, or cut the sweetness, and it just doesn’t bake up like granola should. What you end up with is nothing but a bunch of dried oats ‘n stuff in a pan. (Kinda, y’know, like 19th century granola.)
Anyway, add to that already-sweet baseline granola recipe, the aforementioned slow, steady march toward candy for breakfast, lunch and dinner? That’s granola nowadays…and…well, let’s just say it’s not something I’m drawn to.
A sourdough granola revolution
Until now, that is.
Yep, as the title suggests, the following recipe is indeed a way to use up a bit of spent sourdough starter. Which, in my house, is always a plus.
But much more importantly, the inclusion of the starter in this recipe greatly reduces the need for oil or syrup as an oaty cluster binder. (We’re talking one tablespoon of oil, here, instead of half a cup.) Plus it lends an extremely subtle, slightly tangy complexity to the proceedings, which I find exceedingly yummy—and I think you probably will too.
This technique, in short, is a way of going ‘breakfast grownup’—for a moderately healthy (or at least way less unhealthy) granola, which you can make as sweet or unsweet as you like. Pure genius.
This recipe is loosely based on one from King Arthur flour, by the way. But you know me, I’ve never yet met a recipe I didn’t tweak (or make less sweet.)
Here’s the way I do it, but use whatever ingredients you enjoy and/or have on hand.
SOURDOUGH GRANOLA
Prep 15 minutes/ Bake 25-30 minutes/Yield 4.5 cups
1/3 cup spent sourdough starter
3-4 tablespoons honey/maple/agave or other sweet syrup
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/4 teaspoon fine (not flake) salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 3/4 cups rolled oats/rolled barley/rolled rye, or a mixture of all 3 if you happen to have them
1/2 cup walnut halves, chopped coarsely (or use other nuts if you prefer, like almonds or pecans)
1/4 cup roasted peanuts, chopped coarsely if they’re big
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
1/3 cup unsweetened coconut chips, broken smaller if need be
1/2 cup dried fruit of your choice. I used white mulberries, goji berries and cranberries
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line a big rimmed baking sheet with parchment.
In a small bowl, combine the starter, syrup, oil, salt and cinnamon until smooth.
In a large bowl, combine the rolled grains, nuts, seeds and coconut. (*Fruit is not added until after the granola is out of the oven.*)
Pour the contents of the small bowl into the big bowl, and mix until all the ingredients are coated.
Spread into an even layer on the baking tray. Bake for 25 or 30 minutes, or until lightly golden, and smelling nutty and delicious.
Remove from oven and let cool completely. Break into clusters, and add the dried fruit after the granola is completely cooled.
Store in an airtight container for a month or more.
Note: I used 3 tablespoons of syrup. This gives a barely sweet oat mixture, letting the fruit provide the bursts of sweetness. Use the 4 tablespoon measurement (or more if you like) for a sweeter end product.
I’d be tempted to try this recipe using malt extract as the syrup, if you happen to have a brewing aficionado (and therefore brewing ingredients) in the house, as I do. It could add another whole layer of malty complexity. Maybe next time. This time, I used a bit of golden syrup (which is basically a sugar syrup with slight caramel tones) because I had an opened jar of it dangling around for ages, that I’d like to use up.
I would ordinarily lean toward using honey in any recipe requiring sweetener. Honey—and by that I mean real honey, not the stuff they sell in the supermarkets—is still sugar like any other, as far as the way the body interacts with it. (Same is true of maple, date, or agave syrups.) But raw unfiltered honeys also contain a whole world of naturally health-promoting ingredients, so (in my mind, anyway) that kind of makes up for it.
But having said that, we use this incredibly special, pure raw honey from beekeepers who live and work in unspoiled areas of eastern and southern Europe, where the bees wild forage in pristine forests and flower meadows. These guys are passionate about caring properly for their bees, and the extraordinary single-varietal honeys they produce are phenomenal. These honeys are a rare gift, in short, and they deserve to be appreciated and savored as the star of the show—which really wouldn’t happen in a granola recipe. Hence my use of golden syrup instead.
Anyway, use what you have; maple, date or agave would be nice here, too.
Truth be told, I’m mostly off sugar of all kinds these days. Not for any virtuous reason—I just feel so much better without it. Funnily enough, I’m finding I don’t really miss it all that much, most of the time.
But I have to admit, now that I’ve brought it up…I’m a little bit nostalgic, for those faintly pink and beany-lumpy smushed potatoes of yore. Between you and me, I could go for a plate of those right now. And it’s not even Thursday.