Barley flour is a good thing, it gives baked goods or homemade pasta a special, strong flavor. However, you won't bake bread from it alone. You can bake hard flatbreads, but you won't get fluffy bread. If you want to bake a nice loaf, you will have to use about a third of barley, and the rest of wheat flour. I baked "half" bread - half barley and half wheat flour, and formed a flatbread. I like broken bread, especially with stew, then it is very convenient to spread the remaining sauce with a harder crust.
For the barley flatbread you will need:
200 gr active wheat or rye sourdough
300 gr Zelbukis barley flour
300 g wheat flour
1-1.5 glasses of water
0.5 tsp salt
you can add a little yeast
Mix the yeast with water, add the barley flour and leave it in a warm place for 2-3 hours to rise. When the dough rises, add a little yeast. I added about 1 teaspoon of pressed yeast. We can bake without yeast, but this bread will be less risen, harder, like real monastery bread. With yeast, you will bake softer, fluffier bread, and the yeast will give more flavor and make the baked goods easier to digest. Leave it until the dough rises again, about half an hour.
Then add salt, mix and gradually add wheat flour until the dough is kneadable by hand. The amounts of flour I have indicated may not be suitable for your bread, because I do not know what your barley flour will be like, so listen not to me, but to your hands and add wheat flour slowly, little by little, until the dough is easy to shape, but still a little sticky. Do not make the dough too hard, as it will have difficulty rising. Sprinkle the dough with flour and let it rise for about an hour. When it has doubled in size, fold it over and shape it into a round loaf, let it stand for another 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Place the loaf on a baking sheet lined with baking paper. Since barley flour has little gluten, you will find that the dough cracks a lot when it rises, so treat it with great respect. Carefully flatten the loaf with your palm into a flat sheet about 5 cm thick, sprinkle with flour and press it almost to the bottom with your fingers, this way it will not swell and the crust will not bounce during baking.
Place the flatbread in the preheated oven, bake for 10 minutes and reduce the temperature to about 220 degrees. Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until the bottom of the loaf sounds hollow when tapped with your fingers, as if the loaf is empty. This is the best setting for baking time, minutes don't matter here. Take it out, brush off excess flour, cover with a clean kitchen towel and leave to cool for 10-15 minutes. Then break it, spread butter, put whatever you want on top and eat with stew.
Make your own stew, using whatever you have on hand. Mine included beans, onions, garlic, some smoked bacon, pumpkin, a jar of canned tomatoes with peppers, green beans, mushrooms and other vegetables, salted quince and chili flakes.
