Delicious and Easy Granola: Crunchy + Chunky with Sourdough Discard

Granola has a place of honor in our house. My husband, Gabe, is a granola super fan. And his criteria are specific for what granola passes his lips: it must be chunky. And crunchy. And sweet – but not too sweet. He prefers vanilla flavor. And it can’t go soggy fast when served with milk. But it can’t be so hard that it feels like it will break his teeth when served with yogurt.

Gabe has his favorite brand of granola in the USA, but we haven’t settled on a favorite to purchase here in New Zealand. To be honest, we haven’t tried a lot because his USA granola is held in such high esteem in his mind. And store bought granola is expensive here.

I’ve made some delicious granola recipes over the years. In fact, one year for Christmas I made batches of The Minimalist Baker’s Super Crunchy Coconut Granola and gave them away as gifts for several friends. It is a solid recipe and we love it! But with ingredients like almonds, pecans, coconut sugar, and maple syrup, the cost adds up fast. And the recipe as written makes a pretty small batch. With the rate that our family can go through granola, that recipe isn’t sustainable for our monthly food budget or for my investment of time making it.

So I gave up on granola for awhile. We ate our oats as oatmeal or oatmeal bake. And that was fine!

The Evolution of my “Magical” Chunky Sourdough Granola:

But then I was listening to a podcast where the Wild Brothers were interviewed, which caught my attention because they grew up as missionary kids, and I’m raising missionary kids. So I popped over to their streaming platform to check them out. And I found a sweet episode where the “Wild Wives” make granola together. They offered their granola recipe as a PDF, so I downloaded it and gave it a try.

It was good. Really good. And relatively cheap to make. And it made a LOT of granola. But I wanted to see if I could make it even better. Like adding in some omega-3 fatty acids. And a bit of vanilla flavor. And sourdough twang. So I started tweaking. And Gabe started taste testing.

We kept going until we landed on this combination. And I knew I’d got it right when Gabe took a bite, his eyes got wide, and he looked at me and said, “This granola is MAGICAL.”

So there you have it. Apparently this chunky sourdough granola recipe puts me on par with Gandalf.

Why Make Your Own Chunky Sourdough Granola?

We love this chunky granola with sourdough discard for a couple of reasons:

1 – It’s healthy. Packed with oats, ground flax seeds, and bound together with sourdough discard, there is a lot of fiber, plant protein, and trace minerals in this granola. And it is only lightly sweetened – enough that it is pleasant and feels like a treat, but not so much that our kids are wired and bouncing off the walls. We try to avoid sugar bouncing here in our house.

2 – It makes a big batch. The larger our family has gotten (and thus, the more we eat in one meal!), I’m becoming a big fan of batch cooking. This recipe makes a whopping 28 half cup servings. Which means I make it once and then it keeps feeding my kids for at least a week!

3 – It’s pretty cheap. All in, I estimate this batch of granola costs about $10 NZD (just over $6 USD). Obviously, you can make cheaper breakfasts (like, just plain oatmeal). But for a cold cereal type option, with the quantity this recipe makes, I feel like it’s a frugal option.

4 – The texture and taste are “MAGICAL!” Seriously – this crunchy sourdough granola is GOOD. The sweet/salty ratio is just right. The chunks and crunchiness are perfect. Sourdough discard gives it just a hint of tang. The flax seeds add a bit of nuttiness. The sugar with cinnamon and vanilla are sweet in a complex way. It’s just really good. There’s a reason why I claim a serving is 1/2 cup – try stopping with measly 1/4 or 1/3 cup servings!

What’s the Process for Making This Magical Chunky Sourdough Granola?

It’s really easy. I promise! The longest part is the baking bit, so do this on a day when you’re home and puttering. I do it over a morning while homeschooling the kiddos.

Preheat the oven, and pull out your baking sheets (you can save this until after you’ve mixed up your granola mixture if you’ve got a small kitchen). Grab a BIG mixing bowl and your dry ingredients. Put all the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl and stir it together. You can melt your coconut oil in the microwave while you stir. You want the salt and sugar and flax seeds and cinnamon to all get distributed evenly.

Add in your coconut oil and give it another good stir. You’ll want your coconut oil to be distributed evenly too.

Mix the vanilla into your sourdough discard. Then pour the discard over the oat mixture and give it another stir. Yes, if you want to, you can totally count this as a bit of upper body strength training. Just be sure to switch arms halfway through! (Or if you have a large stand mixer, feel free to use that – I don’t have one, so I just get the exercise!).

Spoon the granola mixture out onto the baking sheets. (I line them with baking paper for easy clean up). I have one small baking sheet and one large baking sheet, so I usually have to bake this recipe in two batches.

Place the granola in the oven and bake for 40 minutes, turning it and moving it around gently at the halfway mark.

Let your crunchy sourdough granola cool completely undisturbed before packaging up – this is key for maintaining the chunks!

Variations or Adjustments to this Crunchy Sourdough Granola Recipe:

OK, so if you don’t have enough sourdough discard (I usually don’t have discard), you can make extra by mixing flour and water and starter and letting it sit overnight on the counter. Or if the sourdough isn’t important to you, you can use just flour and water (1 1/2 c flour and 2 cups water). But the taste will be a bit different.

If you don’t have brown sugar on hand (I often don’t), you can use white sugar. If I do this, I like to add 2 tsp of molasses to the sourdough discard just before mixing it in to the oats. This gives it that brown sugar-y flavor.

You can totally add nuts or seeds to this recipe if you want more protein – almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, pecans, walnuts, etc. I’d start with 1 cup and mix it in, and see how it goes.

And although I haven’t tried it this way, the Wild Wives said you can use milk for your liquid instead of water. In that case, you’d NOT do sourdough discard, you’d just mix 1 1/2 cups flour into the dry mixture and then rather than 2 cups of water, use 2 cups of milk instead. If you try this, let me know how it is!

Lastly, I’m working on an option to make this recipe into a chocolate granola recipe. I mean, chocolate for breakfast sounds pretty awesome to me. So stay tuned for that variation!

Serving Options for this Granola:

OK, this is where it gets fun!

So we have this granola recipe with milk (of various kinds: cow’s milk, almond milk, soy milk, etc). I like my milk cold with granola, so that’s how I suggest you consume it! It’s fun to sprinkle raisins or craisins over the top, too. And you can always add nuts.

We also like this granola on our “breakfast parfaits.” Which are made of greek yogurt (unsweetened or flavored), fresh fruit, and granola sprinkled on top. It’s delicious. And the bonus of granola is that it keeps our kids’ mouths occupied so when they are all eating it, it is usually relatively quiet for a few minutes. That’s one of our favorite parenting hack 🙂

This granola is also delicious served over baked apples with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Sort of like an apple crisp. And I’m sure you could do the same thing with other fruit – baked pears, grilled peaches, or stewed berries. So you can use it for dessert when you have company and forgot to make anything special!

And, honestly, it’s just good plain. I will admit, I eat a good half dozen chunks every time I make it while it is cooling on the counter. And sometimes, we put some in zip baggies and take them with us on our family walks on Sabbath just to snack on.

Happy Baking!

I hope you give this crunchy sourdough granola recipe a try, and then come tell me about it in the comments! And if you come up with your own variations, please let me know. Like I said, we’re big granola fans around here – you can never have too much granola!