Barley into flour, via mortar and pestle, then food processor. The finished barley loaves. (The bottom ones had double the amount of ingredient.) | Today's exploit was baking bread from barley flour. We tried four experiments: - We tried grinding our own barley flour (quite the chore, verging on the impossible in a mortar and pestle - you can see why they went with a quern).
- Making barley leaven (well, actually we made this a few days ago, as it takes a few days to form properly)
- Loaves using only barley flour
- Loaves using a mix of wheat and barley flour
The results were quite interesting. Loaf 1 = Barley with leaven Loaf 2 = Barley with yeast Loaf 3 = Barley/wheat with leaven Loaf 4 = Barley/wheat with yeast The Barley/wheat combination with yeast was the lightest and sweetest. You can see why it was the high status option! As well as being denser, the barley loaves went stale and mouldy more quickly too. |