Baking with Barley Flour

This past week I can feel how the season is rapidly changing with the cooler weather settling in. We have a fire in most evenings now to keep the house warm enough. After a beautiful few weeks of dry weather, the rain is winding it's way back to us and it's time to hunker down.

This usually means some subtle changes in our diet as well - when the weather turns colder and the dark starts to close in around us for the winter season, it is time to eat more nourishing cooked foods, easily digested stews and soups. As well as to start dipping into some of the foods preserved during the summer. 

One food which I would not eat a lot of in the warmer months would be barley. Once the season leans towards winter or colder weather however, I always think of delicious barley lamb stews, barley and broccoli dishes and barley bread.

Barley is an interesting grain, it has been around forever and used since ancient times. Along with spelt it is one of my favourite grains to use as a flour for baking breads, cakes and other lovely foods. It is also fairly easy to work with.

Barley adds a nutty flavour to a bread, the consistency however is slightly different then using other flours because there is a very low gluten content, making a more cake like appearance. That is why I alway team it up with spelt or some other flour.

This week was a great week with the cooler weather to make some honey barley bread - this is a wonderful tasting bread which is also fairly sweet and is great for breakfasts or as a dessert with butter and jam.

To make barley bread I used 4 cups of barley flour mixed together with 3 cups of whole grain spelt (all organic of course). Then added a little salt and some bread soda. I decided to add in 1 tablespoon of honey per cup of flour to make this a nice sweet bread.

I had wondered about using only water to make this bread - but knowing a few things about milk I decided to use this. Milk adds flavour, improves texture, sweetens the bread and breaks down some of the gluten, it also makes a nicer softer crust - which is what I wanted. 

So, to the flour I added 2 cups of goat's milk and 1 cup of water. Once this was all mixed up it was like a very thick cake mixture- I also put in a handful of sunflower seeds to give it a little more crunch. 

Honey Barley Bread 

This bread also cooks a little faster and was probably done in about 45 minutes or so. Everyone loved it - with its softer crust and sweetness, very much like a little treat! 

Barley Facts:

Barley is an easy to grow grain

It's been used for thousands of years

It has a low GI (glycemic index)

Low starch content, but high in fibre 

It doesn't rise as much as other flours

Good source of magnesium and selenium

If you want to try something different, get some barley flour and use it in any of your favourite recipes or make some lovely soft bread! 

Have a healthy day,

April

Sliced barley bread

Bulk Buying, Flour and Cinnamon Cake

Today, in my wish to get a little organized for next week and indeed the coming winter season, I did a large bulk shopping trip to build up our own stores here at home. What I found were some different flours I would not usually use too often.

I now have oat flour, more gram flour, barley flour, white spelt and lentil flours. A few years ago, when I was gluten free, I did use more of these. At the time our digestive tracts were still in recovery phase, so we did not eat bread and certainly not cakes.

Now, we are well past that (a few years in fact) and I have been making lots baked goods for us to enjoy. Mostly I use organic whole grain spelt flour for nearly everything. But it is nice to branch out now and again into some different tastes.

When I came home I wanted to try out my white spelt flour in a cake recipe I have been working on and hope to make a few of these cakes in the coming weeks. Tonight I made a cinnamon cake that was supposed to have an almond crumble.

However, at the last minute I thought the almond crumble might not keep frozen, so I ended up mixing the almonds into the batter. Of course, I always start with my standard - 2 cups of flour,  baking soda and a little salt.

Next I wanted the cake to be sweet but am no longer using commercial apple concentrate, so I made some apple sauce from 2 apples with cinnamon and nutmeg mixed in. To this I added 1 cup of butter and two eggs. 

Steamy apple sauce with lots of cinnamon and nutmeg

Using my blender I ground up 1 cup of almonds fairly fine which went into the flour mixture. Then I folded in the apple sauce-butter-egg into the flour mixture. As I was stirring it, I added 1/4 cup of maple syrup and a little more flour.

Cinnamon cake batter in pan

At this point it smelled very almondy so I added more cinnamon! 

Of course, the entire house now smells like cinnamon cake, it looks divine and we are fasting until Thursday... LOL

Into the freezer it goes until next weekend. I hope to have a couple more made by then, perhaps something very different from what I normally make - with all these nice flours to try. 

Hope you have a lovely day!

April

Cinnamon cake, just out of the oven