Rolling Oats and Granola

I mentioned the other day that I had ordered a flaker, which really just rolls oat groats and makes them into old fashioned type oatmeal. I’m not saying rolling your own oat groats is any better than buying storebought old fashioned oats. One of the main reasons I prefer to do it the way I do it is like I mentioned in the previous blog post about grain – I like to keep grain on hand and it will last for years and years as whole grain but once it’s flaked or rolled or ground, all bets are off. It may last a year or a little more but as whole grain, it should last for 20 or 30 years so that’s why oat groats work better for me.

The flaker arrived . . I think it was Tuesday. Yesterday Vince attached it to the mill for me and today I ground oats for another batch of granola.

I feel fairly confident that very few of you are going to roll oat groats to make your own oatmeal but some of you may find this interesting. In that last video I mentioned soaking or hydrating the oats before rolling and there were some questions about why do it that way. As I was grinding oats for the granola, I decided to show the difference in hydrated vs. non-hydrated oats.

The oats on the left were rolled dry and the oats on the right were rolled hydrated.

Trying to get a better picture, I dumped some of them in a skillet. Again, left is dry and right were rehydrated.

Then I dumped them all into the bowl – dry on the left, hydrated on the right.

Can you see the difference? The dry ones want to crack more than roll and have a bit of powder, which is oat flour. The hydrated ones roll out perfectly with very little cracking.

To hydrate, I put however many I’ll need into a big bowl with a lid and add a bit of water. The water is probably about 2 T. for 3 cups of oat groats. I shake it really hard for a minute or so, holding the lid on tightly as I’m shaking the bowl. I remove the lid and if it looks like they’re all just barely damp, that’s good. If I see lots of dry groats, I add another teaspoon of water and shake again. Then I leave the lid on them and let them sit overnight. By the next day, they should be nice and hydrated and will be easy to run through the flaker. Just make sure they don’t look “wet”. Not sure if it would affect the machine or not.

The granola was stirred up and baked.

Now it needs to cool and go into two quart jars and we’ll have it for breakfast til it runs out and then I’ll make more. We will add fruit, either dried or fresh, to our bowls as we eat the granola.