Instructions

1. Soak the groats in plenty of cold water for an hour, then rinse them until the water runs clear. Buckwheat and oats both shed a slippery starch as they soak, and it dries into a gluey film that stops granola separating into clusters.
2. Drain them properly and leave them sitting in the sieve while you make the paste. Wet groats bring water the machine has to remove before it can start on anything else.
3. Pulse the dates, orange juice, the juice of the whole orange, almond extract and lemon juice to a paste, stopping while it is still slightly rough. A completely smooth paste coats the grain too evenly and you lose the clumps.
4. Fold the paste through the groats until every grain is coated, and keep the dried blueberries well out of it. They are already dry, and a blueberry buried in wet paste comes out like a pebble.
5. Spread the mixture over lined sheets loosely rather than pressing it down. Air has to get into the layer, and a compacted slab dries into a single biscuit.
6. Dry at 46 °C for 12 hours, then break the slab up and turn the pieces over. The low setting keeps the orange oils in the granola instead of sending them out of the vent, which is why this is a long run rather than a hot one.
7. Carry on at 46 °C for 14 hours, until a cooled piece is crisp right through; test one every hour or so towards the end. This is the classic thing to pull too early, because sugar-coated grain feels crisp on the tray and turns limp in the bowl.
8. Crumble the cold granola into bite-sized clusters and only then stir the blueberries through. Adding them at the end keeps them chewy against the crunch, which is the contrast the recipe is built on.
9. Store it in an airtight jar for a month. The buckwheat gives up first — the nutty smell fades and turns faintly soapy, and that is the point to stop eating it.