My older son's class at Burgundy Farm Country Day School has been studying the medieval time period and their study is culminating with a Medieval Festival tomorrow. Parents were asked to sign up to help provide food, and I took on the challenge of baking barley bread. I'd never baked with barley before, although I bake plenty of wheat-based bread. Nor had I ever cooked in the medieval time period. But, I am a historical interpreter of other time periods, so I was excited to try. And, I've been watching a lot of Ruth Goodman's television shows, so the timing was perfect!
Working with barley flour was very interesting, and I had a fair number of fails. But, I did learn a lot. In the end, I will be serving an upper class person's barley bread, which used ale, yeast, and more white flour than barley and wheat flours (ignore the air bubble in the photo, please!); I also made a middle class person's barley bread, using the ale and yeast, but more wheat flour than white flour; finally, I found a recipe for what would be a lower class person's barley bread, using no ale or yeast or wheat flours at all. This unleavened bread turned out to be more of a pita or tortilla. Fascinating.
And, I learned that barley bread tastes fantastic, too!
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