May 10, 2011
My job as a cereal scientist sometimes affords me the joy of a full day of baking, product development, and promotion of our work and the farmers who are putting their money where their mouth is and growing food barley.
In all the products shown below, the flour has a minimum of 10% stone-ground whole barley. The long loaves and the pretzels have 50% wholegrain barley flour and the big sandwich loaves have 50% barley with 35% stone-ground whole-wheat. The remainder is plain baker’s flour.
This was for our successful “Barley and Friends” field day. {link} held this May 9th.
And good practice for our event at the “Kneading Conference West” in September {link}.
The barley pretzels are, of course, the natural accompaniment to that other barley product, good beer!
Thanks to Jake Mattson of the Oregon State Food Science department for helping to divide, shape, and dip [in 1M NaOH] the 100 pretzels we made!
January 17, 2011
Great discussion of the bread-making process by award winning, erudite, and articulate baker Craig Ponsford. Craig is a past chairman of the board of the Bread Bakers Guild of America and won the French and Specialty Breads category in the 1996 Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie in France, the win helping to energize the artisan bread movement in the USA. Craig is incredibly generous of spirit as I have luckily come to know over the last year.
[Tom McMahon was the founder of the BBGA]
CRAIG’S “OBSESSIVES” VIDEO at Chow: a beautifully straight-forward exposé of the craft
Craig just opened a new place in San Rafael CA. PONSFORD’S PLACE. It’s worth visiting the website, but if you’re in the area visit the bakery.
You can also see Criag in action at http://communitygrains.com/using.html making a whole-wheat ciabatta [formulation here].
On the theme of community grains keep your eyes out for the Kneading Conference West in the state of Washington September 2011, where if plans go right I will be presenting on formulating barley flour into hand-crafted breads. This is a new extension of the well regarded Kneading Conference in Maine. The barely work is part of our push to reintroduce barley as a mainstream food. The major partner in this is our barley breeding program led by Pat Hayes.
Other proponents of barley as food can be found at…
http://www.barleyfoods.org/
and
http://www.canadianfoodbarley.ca/CFB%20website_english/index.htm
Both sites have info and recipes to help make barley a part of your day.
Why would you. Well apart from great taste it’s good for you.
WHAT BARLEY FOODS CAN DO FOR YOU
February 24, 2010
New from Harold McGee, “Better bread with less kneading”
Talking about the interactions of the amount of water in the dough, kneading amount, whole wheat flours, water absorption capacity of the flour, and the amount of yeast. But read McGee’s post – I don’t want to steal his thunder and he has covered the topic nicely already.
Michel Suas is the founder of the San Francisco Baking Institute where I spent a couple of weeks in the summer of 2008 learning artisan baking techniques.
This is one of the fruits of my SFBI experience
Related posts: http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/deliciousnessw09/2009/04/15/no-knead-breads/
http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/deliciousnessw09/2009/02/11/baking-at-home-getting-enough-air-into-your-dough/
October 26, 2009
Oregon’s Agricultural Progress articles…
Articles about our wheat and barley breeding activities.
Kernel Chemistry – wheat
Barley world
OSU