Instructions

1. Melt the coconut oil and whisk it into the honey and water before anything dry goes near the bowl. Cold oil seizes into shards against room-temperature honey, and those shards never coat anything.
2. Pour the wet mixture over the oats, bran, seeds, coconut and nuts and turn it over with a spatula until nothing dry is left at the bottom. A dry pocket stays pale and tastes of raw oat.
3. Let the bowl stand for twenty minutes before it goes on a tray. The oats swell and take up the liquid; granola spread straight away leaves a slick of honey behind on the sheet.
4. Spread it over lined trays about as deep as a single oat flake. Heaped granola dries into one slab with a soft middle, and breaking that slab up afterwards gives you dust rather than clusters.
5. Dehydrate at 43 °C for 18 hours. Stir it with a fork every few hours if you want it loose, or leave it entirely alone for the whole run if clusters are the point.
6. Test a handful that has been off the tray for ten minutes. It should rattle in the palm and a seed should split under a tooth rather than dent — honey stays soft while it is warm and will fool you on the tray.
7. A batch still chewy at the halfway mark almost always had too deep a layer. Spread it thinner over an extra tray rather than adding hours to the end.
8. Cool it completely on the tray before it is jarred. Sealed airtight it stays crunchy for two months, and the fridge buys another month or two — it is the oil in the nuts and seeds that sets that limit, not the oats.