Homemade gluten free granola is easy when you start with safe whole oats, following what is called the Purity Protocol. Everything else is naturally gluten free and you probably have the ingredients in your kitchen right now. If you’re tired of the price of store bought granola, add this to your regular breakfast rotation. I’ve been making it for decades, switching up the dried fruit and nuts so it’s different every time.
Smart cooks need a handful of recipes for variety in their weekday breakfasts. My list also includes overnight gluten free oats, chia pudding with yogurt and premade egg bites. Varying breakfasts like this makes it easy to reach the recommended 30 Plants a week for a healthy gut.
Ingredients
One batch makes 8 cups and keeps for up to 8 weeks, so that covers quite a few weekday breakfasts.
- Gluten free whole oats - Whole oats are larger flakes than quick oats or instant oats and they're the best texture for granola.
- Coconut flakes - The larger pieces give a nice texture to this granola but any shredded coconut from the baking aisle at any grocery store will work too.
- Pistachios & dried apricots - The original recipe was with pistachios and apricots so that's the name. Of course those are two ingredients that have substitutes.
- Honey, vegetable oil and orange juice - This is the liquid that adds just the right hint of sweetness.
- Cinnamon & nutmeg - Spices for breakfast!
See recipe card for complete ingredient list and exact amounts.
What is the Purity Protocol for Oats
Oats grow in fields near wheat and are often processed and transported on the same equipment. This made oats unsafe for a strict gluten free diet until the purity protocol was created. It is now possible to purchase safe oats grown, harvested, transported and tested following the purity protocol.
The fact that some people with celiac disease cannot tolerate even safe oats is another topic of concern. If this is new for you it may be one of those topics you didn't know you needed to know about. The food industry is ever changing so anyone living with food restrictions needs to know how to keep up with the ongoing changes.
One of the ways I keep up is listening to podcasts. Randomly hearing a topic you didn't know about is one of the benefits of subscribing. This topic wasn't on my radar but I learned more about the purity protocol on Episode 26 - Only Oats Goes Organic on A Canadian Celiac Podcast.
Many bloggers in the gluten free community do our best to share accurate information but ultimately you should be getting your health information from a credible source. Read this Position Paper on Oats on the Celiac Canada website on this topic.
Where to Buy Certified Gluten Free Oats
Safe gluten free oats are now widely available in stores and online. Look for packages with a certified gluten free logo.
- Only Oats, a Canadian product from Saskatchewan
- Adagio Acres, a Canadian product from Manitoba
- Bob's Red Mill
- Anita's Organic
- Montana Gluten Free Raw Oatmeal
Substitutions: Nuts, Seeds, Fruit and Sweetener
This is the kind of recipe where you can substitute all the time. Keep your pantry ingredients moving, so you can buy different nuts and seeds for a change. Use this list to remind you to try something different.
- Nuts - almonds, pecans, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews or macadamias.
- Seeds - sunflower, sesame, pumpkin, chia or flax seeds.
- Dried Fruit - mango, pineapple, cranberries, dates or raisins.
- Sweetener - instead of honey try maple syrup or your sweetener of choice.
Ways to Eat Homemade Granola
- In a bowl with milk or yogurt and fruit (fresh or dried).
- Eat granola as a snack, right out of the jar.
- Make breakfast parfaits by layering granola, yogurt and fruit in wine glasses.
- Add granola to streusel topping in place of the nuts, use to top muffins and coffee cake before baking.
- Fold granola into muffin or pancake batter to add a nice crunch.
- Stir granola into cookie dough for Granola Cookies.
- Sprinkle granola on a fruit smoothie bowl or even on ice cream!
Get The Tools
Every kitchen needs basic tools and these are some of the items I use to make granola.
- Both a 4-cup pyrex measuring cup and the 1-cup or 2-cup size to measure the liquid. I like a lot of measuring cups so I can cook and bake without running out.
- 2 baking sheets: I have 2 sets, one for cooking (roasting vegetables with garlic), and another for baking only (no garlic or onion allowed).
- Mason jars! I store my granola in the large 4-cup size jar and the 1 or 2-cup jars, preferably the short jars with a wide mouth.
Top Tip: Organize For Success
Portion granola into the sizes you need. I fill small half cup jars for my husband to snack on. I like the wide-mouth 1-cup Mason jars half full with granola, leaving room for milk or yogurt. I can eat it at home or grab-and-go. If you love Mason jars like I do check out my 2-lid system with 7 jar sizes in Organize For Success with Mason Jars.
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If you make this granola, I’d love to hear how you switched it up. Leave a star rating and a comment below, since it helps other gluten free cooks find recipes that work.
Homemade Gluten Free Granola
Ingredients
- 4 cups certified gluten free whole oats*
- 1 cup coconut flakes or shredded coconut
- ¾ cup pistachios
WET INGREDIENTS
- ⅓ cup honey
- ⅓ cup vegetable oil
- ¼ cup orange juice or apple juice
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon salt
Finishing
- ½ cup dried apricots chopped
Instructions
- Line 2 large, rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Preheat oven to 325°F.
- In a large bowl combine oats, coconut and pistachios.
- In a 2-cup pyrex measuring cup combine honey, vegetable oil, orange juice and spices. Heat in microwave on high for 1 minute, stir. Heat for another minute then stir.
- Pour liquid over oat mixture and stir. Divide between baking sheets and spread evenly in the pans.
- Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes.
- Remove from oven and gently stir pushing the browned outer edges of the mixture into the center of the pans and moving the middle part toward the outer edges.
- Bake for another 15 minutes or until nicely browned. Cool completely.
- Stir in apricots. Store in an airtight container for up to 8 weeks.
Notes
- NUTS - almonds, pecans, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews or macadamias.
- SEEDS - sunflower, sesame, pumpkin, chia or flax seeds.
- DRIED FRUIT - mango, pineapple, cranberries, dates or raisins.
- SWEETENER - instead of honey try maple syrup or your sweetener of choice.
Victor Vicini
Looks great Cinde. Can’t wait to try this. Love granola! Thank you for responding to my emails.. it really helps to hear from someone who loves food and has Celiac.
Thanks
Vic
Cinde Little
Hi Vic! I love granola too, always the homemade kind. I'm actually not the one who is celiac, it's my friend but I teach GF cooking classes, sell homemade cookie dough and volunteer with the local Celiac Chapter so I'm all in. 🙂 Thanks for the questions and I hope you enjoy the granola!
Paula Taylor
Hi, this looks like a great recipe. I don’t usually eat much granola but I found one brand I liked - not full of nasties and it tasted just right. They unfortunately changed the recipe with no notification and it just tasted ‘wrong’ after that, and so I want to make my own. (Sorry this is turning out to be long!).
I’m in the uk and I frequently make flapjacks - the British kind, baked till chewy and golden, or a little bit longer for those who like them crunchy - I do best of both, soft and a bit gooey and chewy in the middle and crispy round the edges. I mix up the additions - various dried fruits, nuts etc. Now, my question is, if I follow your method above, but using what I would use to make my basic flapjack recipe (ie quantities/ratios and the basic ingredients I use) but then cook it the way you do, without pushing it all down like I would normally, do you think that would work as granola? To give you an idea, my basic recipe is usually butter, oats with golden syrup and equal quantities of brown (usually muscovado sugar). I melt the butter and dissolve the sugar in a pan, along with the golden syrup (I’m not so keen on honey), then when all dissolved I mis in the oats and Amy nuts, fruits etc. It needs to be enough to cover the oats. At that point I squash firmly into a lined tin and put in oven. Do you think, my recipe would then work if I follow your directions, or will my mixture be too ‘wet’? And if you think I need to make some changes What suggestions could you make that you think will work better?
Thank you so much!
Paula
Cinde Little
Hi Paula! I looked at a few recipes for British Flapjacks and they sound fabulous, what we would call Oat Bars or Granola Bars. Here's what I suggest to turn your flapjacks into granola. 1) Reduce the liquid portion of your flapjacks (butter, sugar and syrup) by 1 Tbsp of each to start. 2) Butter would make flapjacks stick together so try half oil/half butter OR replace the butter with oil (using 7/8 cup of oil for every 1 cup butter). 3) Loosely put the granola on a baking pan that comfortably hold the loose mixture. If it's too big the granola around the edges will burn so keep an eye on it as it cooks and stir it if necessary. Best of luck and let me know how it goes! I'll try the flapjacks. 🙂