Name: To Make Barley Bread
Ingredients: 1 bushel barley (about 52.5 pounds); water; yeast; coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')

To Make Barley Bread

Ingredients

1 bushel barley (about 52.5 pounds)
water
yeast
coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meal

Remove the bran from the barley and grind it into meal, yielding about 44 pounds.

Make the dough

In a large bowl, combine the barley meal with water, yeast, and salt to form a dough.
Divide the dough into eight equal loaves.

Bake and cool

Bake the loaves in a 400°F (200°C) oven until thoroughly baked.
Remove the loaves from the oven and let them cool for two hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Barley: Forms the bulk of the bread, giving its flour-based structure and earthy flavor.
Yeast: Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become lighter in texture.
Water: Hydrates the meal so it forms a cohesive dough and gluten-free starches can set.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.