After years of wishing for one, our new kitchen has a double oven with convection. The problem is I haven't gotten used to it and have to remind myself there is a second oven. And I always forget about the convection setting, though the times I have used it for cookies it worked well. So now I've found another area where convection is really beneficial, and that's granola. Using a convection oven for granola helps it bake quickly and evenly.
Convection Oven Granola is a variation on my old favorite clumpy granola using the convection setting and a few new tricks. Along with adding a little wheat germ and increasing the nuts, I incorporated a trick I learned from Camilla Saulsbury which is to add a little egg white to the mixture to lighten the texture and give it a little extra crunch.
This recipe does have a lot of nuts. Feel free to leave them out or add in different nuts, more oats, etc. You can also use a little coconut, sesame, flaxseed and dried fruit. And finally, this granola is probably good with milk or toppings, but I wouldn't know. I eat it straight, so I like it clumpy with whole nuts.
Cuisinart Air Fryer Convection Oven Granola
It's been a while since I posted this recipe and since then I've acquired a Cuisinart Air Fryer Toaster Oven. It's probably my favorite appliance at the moment because it does so many things. The manual comes with a granola recipe that is similar to the one below. The Cuisinart manual granola recipe (called Crunchy Granola) calls for 1 ½ cups oats, ¾ cup assorted nuts, ½ cup unsweetened coconut,¼ cup sunflower seeds, ¼ cup hulled pumpkin seeds, ½ teaspoon kosher salt (use ¼ teaspoon if using regular not-kosher salt) and a pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg. For the oil and sweetener, you use ¼ cup coconut oil and ¼ cup maple syrup. Bake on the lined toaster oven pan at 300F for 20 minutes on rack 2, stirring halfway through. If omitting the coconut, I recommend adding another ⅓ cup of oats to offset the extra oil.
Granola Bark
I've changed a few things in the recipe. It seems there's really no need to heat the sugar and syrup mixture, so now I just mix it in with the egg white and oil. I also like making this as granola bark. To make it as bark, you just flatten it down on the baking sheet, lay another sheet of parchment over it, then press down with a second baking sheet. Directions are in the notes.
Recipe
Convection Oven Granola
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups rolled oats (120 grams)
- ½ cup slivered or sliced almonds (60 grams)
- ½ cup pecans
- ¼ cup walnuts or pumpkin seeds Use any nut or seed you want here
- 2 teaspoons of toasted wheat germ or 2 tablespoons ground flax (I've been using 2 T. flax lately rather than the 2 teaspoons wheat germ).
- ⅜ teaspoon salt
- 1 large egg white medium, lightly beaten with a fork
- 3 tablespoons brown sugar (36 grams)
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup (40 grams)
- 1 tablespoon honey (20 grams)
- 2 tablespoons oil,walnut oil, coconut oil, any kind you want (26 grams)
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
- Preheat the convection oven to 275 degrees F. Line a heavy, large rimmed cookie sheet with parchment paper.
- In a large bowl, stir together the rolled oats, almonds, pecans, walnuts and wheat germ. Toss in salt and stir to evenly disperse salt.
- In a mixing bowl, whisk the egg white until frothy then stir in brown sugar, maple syrup, honey, oil and vanilla. Mix well and toss with the oat mixture.
- Spread oat mixture onto the baking sheet, spreading as evenly as possible and pressing down slightly so that oats are in a thin, closely packed layer.
- Bake for 35 to 45 minutes in the convection oven stopping to stir every 15 minutes. The granola should be nicely browned, but still kind of soft when you take it out of the oven. It should crisp up as it cools.
- Makes about 2 ½ cups
Anna says
Stephanie, in my experience it just knocks a few minutes off things. For cookies, it usually knocks off about 3 to 5 minutes, but for this granola I think I saved 10. What I like about it is the even heat distribution.
Stephanie says
how does convection affect baking times? I know it is supposed to make baking time shorter, so does that mean you don't go by the time stated in a recipe and must start checking it much sooner?
Just curious. My mother in law has a convection oven and I'm always afraid to bake with it for this reason.
Anna says
Shelly, I will go and link to my original version of this recipe where I cook it in the oven. I usually cook it at 250 for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, keeping it loosely covered with a sheet of foil for the first hour.
https://www.cookiemadness.net/2006/11/clumpy-granola/
Amanda says
Great idea using the convection oven for the granola. I don't have one here, but have had one in a previous house. Like you, I had to remind myself the second oven was there! LOL
Shelly says
Anna,
This receipe sounds awesome. I dont have a convection oven. What is the temp. and cooking time in a standard oven?
Thanks!
bakingblonde says
OOOh, i love some good granola. IF i have a little left over I just through it in some cookie dough. So yummy and a little unexpected!
I love the big chunks of pecans in your recipe
Louise says
Adella - I don't use the convection roast for the very reason you are talking about. Early on I tried a Tyler Florence Roasted Chicken recipe where he cooked the bird at (I think) 500F. It smoked out the house & the alarms went off. I haven't used convection roast since then, but I use convection bake all of the time.
I forgot to mention that my manual also gives suggestions on which shelves to use depending on how much you're planning to bake. Some of the suggestions aren't that obvious but they work.
Pam Shank says
So glad you posted about your oven today. My kitchen is getting rennovated & the double wall oven got put in yesterday. I got the JennAir. The manual is so overwhelming! I decided I would learn 1 new thing a day. Tonite I set display with time,date etc..took forever. then I did turn on the top then bottom oven and set the timer. Enough for 1 day. I'll try the convection down the road a little. My kitchen won't be done for about a month so I have time to learn 1 thing a day on it before I can really use it. May actually make the granola in it in a few months. Thanks
Adella says
I hate my convection oven! It's a fancy Bosch that I find noisy and hard to figure out.
I never seem to know what I am going to get when I use it. Will it be too crisp? Will it be too dried out? It takes forever to preheat and the fan runs for an inordinate amount of time AFTER I have turned it off. It seems that the digital control panels get overheated and have to be cooled off by the fans.
The only thing I even remotely enjoy about it is the convection roast function, but the fat generated by a roasting chicken or turkey lines the oven so completely that I have to run the self-clean the next day or I will get smokey fumes from the fans when I use the oven the next time. And self-cleaning takes forever!
I wish I could get my old standard oven back, but it has long been buried in the landfill.
Rant, rant..
Barb says
Just to add in on the uses of convection ovens...I like to roast vegetables. They roast evenly and you don't have to flip them part way through. It's more reliable.
Enjoy!
Fallon says
Delicious! I love clumpy/chewy granola as well.
Katrina says
I'll have to try the granola. I have a convection oven now too and forget to use it. Last winter I had oatmeal everyday, this year, I've been eating yogurt with granola everyday. I run out often! I do love that egg white method of Camilla's.
With my mom's tons of cookie baking every week during the farmer's market (the cookies sale out every week), she bakes like crazy on Friday for the market on Sat., And she always uses (and loves) her convection oven--three trays at a time gets it done a lot faster. And she always sets the oven 25 degrees less than a recipe says. That said, I agree with Louise, check the real temp of your oven and find out what works best for it.
Anna says
Sue, I wish I'd tried it sooner. I usually have to cover and uncover my granola to keep it from burning. Granola made with butter is even harder to control.
Darlene, thanks for mentioning that you forget to use it too! Now I know it's not just me. That biscotti trick sounds kind of advanced. I need to get through Convection 101.
Louise, thanks for all the details. I'm going to have to refer back to them when I come up with questions.
Rina, you can use whatever oil you want. I never buy Canola because to me, it tastes like fish. It's one of those weird aversions. As for the walnut oil, I usually buy the strong type, but I accidentally bought Spectrum a while back and it is very, very, mild. You hardly taste the walnut. I'm using it in things where a hint of walnut would, theoretically, be good. However, I don't even get the hint.
Darlene says
Thanks so much for the information Louise. It was very helpful.
Louise says
I bake cookies, cakes, and almost everything using convection bake. Certain other things I use convection roast or regular bake, but not very frequently. My wall oven is an Electrolux. The actual temperature on convection is -35F less than the set temperature. Convection roast is actually +30F higher than the set temp. Bake is right on. Bosch advertises "Automatic Temperature Conversion for Convection Cooking" which probably means the temperature is 25 degrees less than the set temperature. Four years ago when I got the Electrolux and had never used convection, we created a graph of the oven temperatures by going up the set temperature range in 25 degree increments and recording the actual temperature. I had a lab thermometer in the oven. We did this for the three types of baking and we did it several times for each. My initial oven was replaced by the factory and we actually did all the temp documenting again on the replacement. And we confirmed the results with a factory engineer when we were discussing the initial failure. Because of the way my oven is calibrated, if I was told to use 275 degrees, I would actually set the oven to 310.
Rina says
Anna - this looks great! Have you ever tried an alternative for walnut oil? Maybe something flavorless like canola? Also, the egg white trick seems like a great tip, I've never tried that and will do so next time.
Darlene says
These questions are for Louise (who seems to have a lot of experience with convection cooking/baking)or Anna:
Do you really use convection for baking cakes, cookies, etc. all the time? Also, are you saying when we set the convection oven to 350 degrees, it really only reaches 325 degrees? Therefore, if a recipe states to bake a cake at 350 degrees we should set the oven for 375 degrees? Should we just check our oven's temperature with a regular oven thermometer?
Thanks in advance.
melissa says
Cool! I love granola, and this sounds perfect for making it crunchy and baking more evenly! I don't have a confection over, but our Cuisinart toaster oven has the capability to work as one -- so I might try this but cut the recipe in half or thirds, as the tray is not as big as a regular baking tray...
Sue says
There's a good article about convection ovens here: http://www.finecooking.com/articles/convection-ovens.aspx
Louise says
Convection is great for everything and I rarely use anything else. But, it's important to know what temperature your oven is really cooking at so you can use any recipe. By design many convection ovens show a "set" temperature 25 degrees more than the actual temperature. It's important to know your oven.
Darlene says
I've had a convection oven for years, and also forget to use it because most recipes do not state to bake in a convection oven. After speaking with the baker for an Italian pastry stand at our farmers market, I'm thinking of trying convection for baking biscotti. The baker mentioned that he did not twice bake his biscotti because they came crunchy by baking them once only in a log form in his bakery oven with the back of the oven open. Maybe that creates air flow similar to convection? Please let us know if you ever try baking your biscotti in the convection oven.
Sue says
Your granola looks really good. I'd like some right now!
I've never thought to use my convection oven for granola, thanks for the tip!
I have to say that I don't use my convection oven a lot for baking, and I don't like it all for cookies, but I love it for roasting poultry and meats. I use it for some breads and rolls, and my husband loves it for reheating things. It also works well for home made pizza.