Contrary to what you might think, I have not just been sitting here slacking on this blog's Recipe of the Week feature. I've been sitting here baking batch after batch of Mark Bittman's Crunchy Granola and slacking on this blog's Recipe of the Week feature!

I admit to being a somewhat new convert to the Cult of Bittman, but I have fallen hard for the man behind the New York Times' Minimalist column, and here's why: Mr. Bittman writes the best kind of recipe, one that's usually short on ingredients and simple in its preparation and perhaps because of its spare nature, wide open to variations, substitutions, and tweaking. Mr. Bittman is like the favorite high school teacher you never had (maybe that's why I started referring to him as Mr. Bittman), the one who taught you the fundamentals and then sat back in his chair with a mug of coffee in his hand and his feet on the desk to delight in all the new directions in which his students could take old ideas. If you've ever perused one of his How to Cook Everything books, you know what I mean. For each of the hundreds of recipes in the tomes, Bittman offers a handful of variations, with swapped-in ingredients that put an entirely new spin on each dish.

This granola is one such recipe. By changing up the sweetener, nuts, spices, and dried fruits, I've made several different versions of the stuff, from a basic maple-vanilla-almond-blueberry to a hearty maple-pecan-flaxseed-cranberry to a complex honey-cardamom-pistachio-apricot. (The version published in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, unlike the New York Times recipe, comes with a bunch of variation ideas, but trust me: This stuff is almost impossible to foul up, so you can be imaginative and freehanded.) I cut the recipe in half, store it in an airtight container on the kitchen counter, and it feeds me for breakfast for more than a week. I've found that topping a bowl of good quality plain yogurt with a scoop of this satisfying homemade cereal and maybe a few slices of banana in the morning staves off the temptation to skip real breakfast and just stop at the bakery for a scone after my morning walk, and it keeps me sated until late lunch.

Make sure to check the granola and stir it frequently as it bakes, and beware that this stuff will turn on a dime from perfectly toasted to a bit too brown (using honey as a sweetener tends to increase this risk). It will continue to crunchify even after it cools, so go ahead and pull it out of the oven a second before you think it's done.

Crunchy Granola
Makes about 8 cups (at least 16 servings)

6 cups rolled oats (not quick-cooking or instant)
2 cups mixed nuts and seeds: sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, chopped walnuts, pecans, almonds or cashews.
1 cup dried unsweetened shredded coconut, optional
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, or to taste
Dash salt
1/2 to 1 cup honey or maple syrup, or to taste
1 cup raisins or chopped dried fruit, optional.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a bowl, combine oats, nuts and seeds, coconut, cinnamon, salt and sweetener. Place on a sheet pan and put in oven. Bake for 30 minutes or a little longer, stirring occasionally. Mixture should brown evenly; the browner it gets without burning, the crunchier the granola will be.

2. Remove pan from oven and add raisins or dried fruit. Cool on a rack, stirring once in a while until granola reaches room temperature. Transfer to a sealed container and store in refrigerator; it will keep indefinitely.