Grind and Grind and Grind Some More

The Gospel lesson for this Sunday isJohn's version of Jesus feeding the 5000. While this story appears in all four Gospel accounts, only in John does it mention that the five loaves of bread were made from barley. And this got me thinking.

My dad is a wonderful bread baker. He won a blue ribbon at the MN State Fair a few years ago when he submitted his honey whole wheat bread, and he has a few recipes published in a cookbook written by one of his bread club buddies. Therefore growing up we had all sorts of bread; whole wheat, challah, rye, pumpernickel. But I don't think I have ever had barley bread.

Now being that I am my father's daughter, I have taken up my father's joy in bread baking and I thought I would try my hand at making some barely bread for a sermon illustration. So I went to my three trustiest bread cookbooks. Total I think there were five recipes for barley bread and every one was mixed with fruits or nuts. So and internet search found me a few options and I went with this recipe. So off to the store I went to get barley flour.

And there was no barley flour, even at the healthy/whole food store. But there was pearled barley sold in bulk. So I bought some and came home ready to workout my food processor to get some barley flour.

And what a workout my food processor got. To make 2 cups of barley flour it took me over an hour and a half (granted I stopped for a half hour at one point in order not to burn out the motor)!

I can't imagine how long it would have taken by hand or with a stone mill to get enough flour to make five small loaves of bread. My guess is that it would take most of the day by hand.

No wonder why barely was the grain of the poor, it is so hard that it takes forever to do something with. Granted it was a really good grain to grow. According to my husband the near-eastern historian, barley does well in drought, flood, salty soil, and is overall a sturdier plant than wheat.

The barely dough is currently rising so we will see how it rises and taste. And while I have learned a little bit more about barely through this experiment I have also learned that I should by a coffee grinder or flour mill.

I'll post some pictures of the final loaf and a critic of the recipe after I have some tomorrow.