Barley/Wheat Experiment
One of my Christmas gifts this year was several pounds of barley and of oats to feed my home milling habit. After noodling around here on TFL and the web, I cobbled together a formula to use some barley flour.
Ingredients
400g whole wheat flour, freshly milled
400g whole barley flour, freshly milled
400g all purpose flour
5g malted grain (I used malted barley)
900g water
60g honey
24g salt
10g active dry yeast
Process
Autolyse the flours, malt, water, and honey for 30 minutes. Mix the salt into the dough. Mix the yeast into the dough. Do three sets of stretch and folds at 20-30 minute intervals. When the dough has doubled from its original volume, divide into two pieces. Shape the loaves and place them in prepared bread pans. (I used 8x4 pans but this amount of dough will be more at home in two 9x5 pans.) Ferment the loaves until they have nearly doubled, then bake in a preheated oven at 375F for 50-60 minutes until the internal temperature reaches 195F.
Notes
Overall, I’m pleased with this bread, considering it was very much a seat of the pants experiment with a flour that I don’t know well. It rose well, is moist, and has a lovely flavor that is milder than a whole wheat bread. The honey isn’t enough to make the bread sweet but it does play up the other flavors. The texture is firm. Although the bread is somewhat more prone to crumbling than an all-wheat bread, it holds together fairly well.
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The crumb is more open than I had expected, perhaps because of the stretch and folds instead of a more vigorous kneading. The compression visible around the edges is due to excess dough for the pan size, rather than over proofing. Judging from the oven spring, it may actually have been mildly under proofed.
I will play with this again. I'm curious to see how molasses would combine with the other flavors, for instance. At 33.3% barley flour, it probably isn’t worth pushing for higher percentages. It is a hefty bread as is and the crumb openness would suffer with an increased barley content. I also wonder if I might nudge the diastatic malt content slightly higher. That might improve the crust browning.
If anyone has pointers, I’m open for suggestions.
Paul