the antipodean remaking of the Swiss breakfast: rolled oats, nuts, and coconut baked with oil and honey until golden and crunchy, then tumbled with dried fruit, the everyday muesli of Australia and New Zealand
Origin: Australia and New Zealand
From the journey of Oat.
When the Swiss muesli of Bircher-Benner reached the Antipodes, it was remade to antipodean taste, and the result, toasted muesli, is now so standard in Australia and New Zealand that it is very nearly what the word 'muesli' means there. Where the original is soft, raw, and soaked, the antipodean version is toasted: the oats, nuts, and coconut are baked with oil and honey until deep golden and crunchy, closer in spirit to a light granola than to the damp Swiss bowl. It sits on every supermarket shelf and breakfast table across both countries, eaten with cold milk or, very commonly, with yoghurt and fresh fruit, and it belongs to the same confident, sun-loving, health-conscious food culture that gave the Antipodes the flat white and the smashed-avocado breakfast. The distinction between toasted and untoasted (or 'natural') muesli is a real and understood one in Australian and New Zealand shops and homes, and the toasted kind is the more popular. Its making is close to that of granola but generally lighter on the sweetener and heavier on the oats, so that it stays a breakfast cereal rather than becoming a sweet: rolled oats, chopped nuts, seeds, and desiccated or flaked coconut are tossed with a modest amount of oil and honey, baked slow until golden, and then mixed, once cool, with dried fruit. Coconut is the characteristic antipodean note, echoing its place in the ANZAC biscuit, and it toasts alongside the oats to a fragrant, nutty gold. The result keeps for weeks and is the plainest and most everyday way that the oat, that most northern of grains, is eaten under the southern sun.
The line between toasted muesli and granola is one of degree: muesli generally uses less oil and sweetener and is stirred more so it stays loose, whilst granola is sweeter and clumpier. 'Natural' (untoasted) muesli is simply the same mixture of oats, nuts, seeds, coconut, and dried fruit left raw and unbaked, in the older Swiss manner. Vary the nuts, seeds, and dried fruit freely. Rolled oats are essential; do not use instant. A handful of the mixture soaked overnight in milk or juice, Bircher-style, makes a good breakfast for those who prefer it soft.
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