Does barley have exceptionally high enzymatic activities?
So far, I've worked with barley flour (pearl barley ground from scratch) for 4 times. Every single time, the resulting dough ended up with broken gluten. The gluten was so short that it's impossible to support itself. Therefore I got flatbread every time.
The % of barley flour I used was 30% while the rest was some kind of whole wheat or spelt flour.
Have anyone experienced the same situation? I suspect this is attributed to the action of protease, which speeded up the break down of gluten into amino acid. Usually I allow the dough to bulk ferment for 6-12 hours at room temperature. The situation seemed to got worse as time passed, which is somewhat similar to how sprouted spelt flour affects the dough.
Some would probably suggest that this is a result of the low gluten property of barley. However, I'm pretty positive that it's unlikely the major cause. I've incorporated a variety of gluten-free flour (mass harina, buckwheat, both glutinous and regular rice flour) into my formula for several times. They did not impose the same effect as barley did at similar percentages.
Thanks ahead for your ideas!