Читать книгу Bread Matters: The sorry state of modern bread and a definitive guide to baking your own - Andrew Whitley - Страница 73

‘For ten-o’clocks we’d have barley bannocks and a piece of Willimer Whang [a hard cheese from West Cumberland],’ according to William Dodd, a farmer and local historian from Ousby Row, a couple of miles from my bakery in Melmerby. Cumberland baking was full of sweet recipes using the sugar, spices, ginger and rum that came in through the ports of Whitehaven and Maryport, the third leg of the triangular trade taking British goods to Africa and slaves to the West Indies. William Dodd’s bannocks may have been made with pure barley flour, but probably included a little wheat to hold them together.

Barley was widely used for bread in the northern uplands, where poorer soils and a damp climate made wheat difficult to grow. Now it is almost exclusively used in brewing – understandable on account of its very low gluten content, but a pity from the nutritional point of view. Recent research has highlighted the fact that barley has good quantities of vitamin E and high levels of soluble fibre (beta glucans), which may have a cholesterol-lowering potential similar to oats (see below).

Barley flour can be added to a wheat dough at up to 30 per cent of the total flour weight without major changes in dough quality. When baked, it has a pronounced sweetness and a suggestion of maltiness. This effect can be multiplied if the barley flour is cooked with some water before being added to the dough: gelatinisation triggers the enzymic conversion of starch to maltose (as indeed it does with all flours). I learned this from the recipe for Tibetan barley bread in my first baking guide, the inimitable Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown (Shambala Publications, 1970).

The advantages of barley flour to the home baker are that:

 It is suitable for a wheat-free diet.

 It adds a sweet, slightly malty flavour to bread.

 It is digestible and nutritious.