Andrew Ross: The Skinny on Gluten (Grain Gathering 2015)

Picture of a gluten window taken in 2013 during Didier Rosada's All about Ciabatta class

I am probably the least science-minded person you and I have ever met. Which is kind of silly if you think about it because my own mother had been studying for her doctorate in organic chemistry when she met my father and even though in the end she chose to be a stay-at-home mom, she always kept a warm spot in her heart for the sciences. Not me. Never a fan. Sorry, Mom!
So you won't be surprised to read that I felt a bit nervous reporting on Professor Andrew Ross's lecture on gluten at the Grain Gathering 2015. I listened to his talk. I dutifully looked at the slides. I took notes.
But I wasn't comfortable with what I had jotted down. Not comfortable enough to make a blog post out of it. So I wrote to Andrew Ross, a cereal scientist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon (as well as a passionate and accomplished baker) and asked him if he would agree to share his talking points. He very kindly forwarded me the text of his whole talk. All direct quotations from his text are in green and between quotation marks. The rest comes from my notes (I am keeping my fingers crossed!).

Gluten has unique functional properties: it traps gas. That's why when bread is baked, you don't get a solid brick. How come?

• "Gluten is a group of proteins found in the endosperm (floury interior part) of wheat grains. Gluten-like proteins are also found in barely and rye."  Wheat includes all types: common hard- grained bread wheats, common soft-grained wheats, einkorn, emmer, spelt, and khorasan (kamut™) among others.
• "The gluten-forming proteins of wheat are made up of two types: gliadins and glutenins."
• "After the addition of water and mechanical energy to wheat flour to form a dough these proteins combine to form functional gluten. Functional gluten is what gives wheat flour doughs their unique gas holding and viscoelastic properties that lead to leavened breads. Gliadins contribute the flow and glutenins the elastic characteristic of wheat-flour dough." 
• Gliadin contains amino-acid sequences that are particularly toxic to celiacs.

What are the potential problems related to wheat?

• Celiac disease (an autoimmune disease): definite
• Specific wheat allergies: definite
• Non-celiac wheat sensitivity: fairly certain
• Non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS): under challenge

"Although a fairly large segment of the population appears to be avoiding, reducing, or wanting to avoid gluten, even the most ardent science-based advocates of the reality of non-celiac gluten sensitivity estimate its prevalence at 0.63 to 6% of the population." 

"Questions arise as to why there has been a documented increase in celiac disease in the last say 50 years, still estimated at about 1% of the population. Some blame has been laid at perceived changes in wheat grain composition independent of changes in other factors in the environment of the western world in the same time period."

Are we eating more gluten?

• Not really. "US wheat consumption per head was maximum in the years around 1870 to 1900 at around 225 lbs per person per year."

For more info see Consumer Preferences Change Wheat Flour Use

Has gluten concentration increased?
I look at my notes. They read "Nonsense" underlined three times!

• In this 2012 article, Sapone et al write: "“One possible explanation is that the selection of wheat varieties with higher gluten content has been a continuous process during the last 10,000 years, with changes dictated more by technological rather than nutritional reasons.” According to Andrew Ross, "this piece of speculation" can be challenged by data showing that it is simply not true: Research does not "support the likelihood that wheat breeding has increased the protein content (proportional to gluten content) of wheat in the United States." (Donald Kansarda, Can an Increase in Celiac Disease Be Attributed to an Increase in the Gluten Content of Wheat as a Consequence of Wheat Breeding?, J Agric Food Chem. 2013 Feb 13; 61(6): 1155–1159.) For more info, read Kansarda's whole article.
• Also, ancient hulled wheats often had a high protein content. 

Is it possible that, as a population, we haven't had enough time to adapt to gluten?

• It is often asserted that, as a species, we haven't had a chance to adapt to wheat because it has only be introduced in the human diet 10,000 years ago.
• But then, what to make of milk? "Caucasian humans have adapted to life-long dairy consumption within about the last 7500 years."
  For more info, see Archaeology: The milk revolution, by Andrew Currie
• Also, cereal grains have been part of our diet for an estimated 23,000 years (wild wheat and barley), and 105,000 years (sorghum).
  For more info, read Six Thousand Years of Bread: Its Holy and Unholy History by H.E. Jacob.

So how did we get to Wheat Belly? 

• "In Wheat Belly,  Davis states “[wheat is] an 18-inch tall plant created by genetic research in the '60s and '70s, this thing has many new features nobody told you about, such as there's a new protein in this thing called gliadin. It's not gluten”. This statement is so categorically wrong that it does not dignify a response. However, it has swayed many people."
• "Others have insisted that the “problems with wheat” stem from the introduction of the short stature wheats in the 1960s." It is true that wheat breeders have thought more about functionality than nutrition for the last 30 years. But coincidence isn't causation as you can easily verify yourself if you google "spurious correlations." Do it, it is hilarious! I just did and discovered for instance that "divorce rate in Florida correlates with per capita consumption of 1% and skim milk (US)". Ha! 
• Short stature wheats are not new. They have been around for years in Asia and Australia. And kernel composition and straw height are not associated with each other.

If there is a problem with non-celiac wheat sensitivity, is it even gluten?

• That question is still open to debate. Some researchers think that wheat sensitivity is caused by wheat components other than gluten. Others insist it is gluten. But even the latter say that added together celiac disease, true wheat allergies, and non-celiac wheat (or gluten) affect about 10% of the general population.
 "That leaves 90% of us who might benefit greatly from the consumption of well-fermented mostly whole-wheat products."
• Non-celiac wheat sensitivity is a more appropriate label than gluten sensitivity.

Are there wheats that function well for bakers and are less likely to trigger celiac disease in susceptible individuals?

• Einkorn and emmer have a much lower reactivity to celiac disease. 
• New varieties could be developed with the quality traits we desire but with a lower potential to trigger celiac disease in susceptible people.
• Strongly recommended reading (open-source download): Kucek, L. K., Veenstra, L. D., Amnuaycheewa, P., & Sorrells, M. E. (2015). A Grounded Guide to Gluten: How Modern Genotypes and Processing Impact Wheat Sensitivity. Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, 14(3), 285-302. 

Kucek (in above article) proposes that long fermentations are beneficial. "However," Andrew Ross says, "I am personally skeptical that the advent of fast-fermented machine-made bread is the culprit leading to the increase in celiac disease. Other factors may be at play. Allergies and many auto-immune diseases not all related to wheat also appear to be increasing. The so-called 'hygiene hypothesis' suggests other factors are primary in the relative increase in auto-immune disorders in the western world."

• Fructans -which are present in wheat- are part of the fiber composition. For most of us, increased fiber is a good thing, but not for people with low tolerance to fermentation in their gut. Why do people with NCGS report feeling better when eating long-fermented bread? 
• Lack of exercise
• Changes in infant feeding practices
• Processing techniques
• Hygiene (too much of it)
• Light pollution/sleep deprivation
• Nitrogen content of soil (best driver of protein content in wheat)

In answer to a question, Andrew Ross explains that, as a baker, he too favors long fermentations: he preferments 15% of his flour in the starter for 12 to 16 hours, adds the other 85% of the flour, mixes the dough and lets it proof for 3.5 hours, then divides and shapes and let it proof again for 1 to 2 hours. And to conclude he adds: "Despite my interpretation of the literature that modern wheats are perfectly safe for the grand majority of the population, it may a defendable hypothesis that older heritage varieties do have advantages over more recent high yielding wheats in terms of mineral nutrition and aspects of flavor and aroma. That is a whole other argument."

My most heartfelt thanks to Professor Ross for sharing his talking points. I have only included a few of his sources but I will gladly email the others to whomever requests them. Most of them are very technical and not necessarily available outside research libraries.

A picture of gluten strands kindly contributed by my facebook friend Yohan Ferranta talented baker and baking consultant who lives and works in Spain.

This is actually a picture of his levain. Thank you, Yohan!

The Grain Gathering 2015

Jumma soft white wheat berries from Pie Ranch Farm in Pescadero, California

I just got back from this year's Grain Gathering (GG), held as usual on the beautiful grounds on Washington State University Extension in Mount Vernon, Washington. I have been attending the GG since its inauguration in 2011 (back then it was called the Kneading Conference West and changed its name only last year). I enjoyed each and every one of them. This year was no exception. Except that it was maybe even better than the four previous ones. Which came as no surprise. Like good wine, GG gets better as it ages.
Of course some things don't change. The setting is as lovely as ever...

...the bread good for body and soul...

...all other food beautiful and tasty...

 

...and I could wax lyrical about the good-natured atmosphere, the sheer pleasure of spending two and a half days in the company of others sharing the same interests and passion, the thrill of hearing big-name bakers and other experts in the field talk about their work and share their know-how, the excitement of catching up with friends and acquaintances but I have covered that angle exhaustively over the years and it is decidedly not fun to write the same thing over and over again (not to mention reading it!). Although if you do want to refresh your memory, you'll find the links here.
So I'll go straight to sharing what I saw and heard. Of course, this year like the other years, I had to choose between many appealing classes, workshops, roundtables and talks held concurrently, which means that that my account can only be partial and my outlook limited. I sure wish I could have attended everything. Hopefully other bloggers will cover some of the ones I didn't get to. For a look at the full schedule, click here.

What struck me as different this year may not be so much the level of energy (it is always tremendous) but how far we have come. Four years ago we were dreaming of bringing back local grain but wondering how farmers could be enticed to grow it if, for lack of local milling infrastructures, bakers had no way to get the flour. Well, today more more bakers are buying small mills to mill the grain themselves. With the help of experienced millers/bakers such as Dave Miller in Oroville, California, they are learning to work with freshly milled flours and clearly excited at the realm of flavors now open to them. Nary a white baguette was to be seen at the GG this year: whole-grain ruled and Dave's class was mobbed.

Cliff Leir of Fol Épi inVictoria, British Columbia -who seemed like the odd man out four years ago when he showed up with armfuls of wholegrain loaves and the plans to his mill- could be seen under a tent helping Scott Mangold of Bread Farm in nearby Edison, Washington, build his own mill and I heard many other bakers enquire about small mills or comparing notes on the ones they had just acquired. Independent mills are starting up too: Nan Kohler's Grist & Toll in Pasadena is one beautiful example. If flour can be milled, farmers can grow grain. With the help of The Bread Lab at WSU Extension, they are learning to select varieties which are not only well adapted to their climate, soil, etc. but offer the flavor and nutritional value craft bakers (and their customers) are looking for not to mention the functional properties required to bake a good loaf.
Still in its infancy, the movement is clearly growing. To most home bakers though, availability remains an issue: living as I do on California's Central Coast, the only locally grown grain I can get without going online is to be found either very occasionally at my neighborhood farmers' market or (until they run out) at the farm stand up the coast, in both case at a price that would make it difficult to bake with it everyday. So yes, we still have a ways to go but at least we are moving in the right direction and nowhere is it more obvious than at the yearly GG.  If all goes well, I am hoping to post (in various degrees of detail) about the following:

• Keynote addresses by Marie-Louise Risgaard and Lot Roca Enrich. Marie-Louise is a baker and teacher and co-owner of Skaertoft Mølle in southern Denmark. Lot is a miller who took over Harinera Roca from her grandfather 25 years ago. Her mill is located in Catalonia, Spain. A welcome look at some of the challenges of organic milling in Europe!
• Dave Miller's class on 100% fresh-milled whole-grain bread: I was only able to attend the milling part but with the help of a generous friend who took lots of videos, I will be able to cover more. Dave kindly sent me his formulas which I will post as well.
• Jeffrey Hamelman's flatbread class: five flatbreads, all baked in a wood-fired oven. Exciting international flavors. You'll enjoy reading all about it. My favorite was the socca (no formula but some tips and one or two pictures) and the anise-chocolate dessert bread (I got the formula for the dough but I think Jeff winged it for the topping, so you'll have to wing it too if you make it).
• Andrew Ross's presentation "The Skinny on Gluten."  The goal was to straighten out the facts. It was so packed with technical info though that I am not sure I can do it justice. But if my notes make sense, I'll share them and you can take it from there. 
• Conversation with bakers: a roundtable moderated by Leslie Mackie of Macrina Bakery in Seattle. Lively and thought-provoking!
• Hand-making whole-grain pasta, a demo by Justin Dissmore, pasta chef at Café Lago in Seattle. He uses Edison wheat and from the tasting we got, I sure wish I could get it where I live.
• And last but not least: Whole-grain artisan bread for the home-baker, a lively demo acted out (you'll see, there is no other word for it) by bakers Josey Baker (yes, that is his real name) of The Mill in San Francisco and Jonathan Bethony, resident baker at The Bread Lab, and by some accounts the baker with the best job in the world since he spends his time testing and baking with the stars. No formulas but plenty of tips!

So stay tuned (and please be patient as it might take some time).

The Grain Gathering 2014 : In the garden of Eden

The 2014 Grain Gathering (formerly known as the Kneading Conference West) took place last week on the gorgeous grounds of Washington State University Agriculture Research Center in Mount Vernon, Washington. It was the fourth of these events and as we now live in California (I had sent in my registration long before I knew our move would be a done deal by the time mid-August came around), I truly thought, before flying up, that this one would probably be the last one for me.

After all, I do get it: eat locally and seasonally, be gentle with the landscape by favoring organic or at least environmentally friendly agricultural methods and always remember that farmers need to make a living too (after all, if there were no more farmers, there'd be nobody between us and Big Food, a thought too scary to contemplate). So I had more or less convinced myself that this year's event would be mostly a rehash and that having attended the first four ones, I was done!

Well, I am happy to say that I was wrong and that I flew home with dreams of the fifth Gathering dancing in my head! The name of the event was changed from Kneading Conference to Grain Gathering because, as Steve Jones (wheat breeder and Director of the Center as well as of the Bread Lab) puts it: "Nobody kneads anymore." Plus bakers are not the only ones interested in grain: farmers, millers, breeders, brewers, etc. flock to Mount Vernon as well. In fact, more than anything, the "gathering" dimension is what will keep me coming. I love the energy and dynamics of encounters with participants from all over (twenty American States, three Canadian Provinces, the United Kingdom and South Africa.) I love it that bread isn't the only focus, that classes, lectures and workshops on milling, malting, brewing, breeding, building earth ovens, transforming a stationary bike into a grain mill, etc... are all mobbed as well.

For an idea of the scope of the Gathering, you may want to take a look at the schedule. In an ideal world (where Time wouldn't exist or if it did, wouldn't be linear), I would have attended all classes, lectures, tours and workshops concurrently but as it is, I had to choose. So I forewent production baking (even though the workshop was run by two bakers I greatly admire, Mel Darbyshire from Grand Central Bakery in Seattle and Scott Mangold from Breadfarm in nearby Bow-Edison), the roundtable on the farmers' perspective, the one on milling and nutrition, the tour of the orchards and gardens, the visit to the wheat, barley and buckwheat fields, the talk on the science of bread, and many more that I won't  even mention because I feel bad for missing them all over again, but if you check out the program, you'll have a good idea of what I am talking about.

In the end I opted for workshops that spoke louder than others either to my imagination or to my practical side or more often than not, to both. I attended all three of Naomi Duguid and Dawn Woodward's instructive and stimulating demos on the use of whole grain in everyday baking and cooking. I watched Richard Miscovich score proofed loaves before loading them in a wood-fired oven (Richard is an extraordinary baker and instructor and seeing him work is both a teaching moment and an experience you are not likely to forget.) I only caught the tail-end of Jeffrey Hamelman's pretzel workshop but still, I arrived at the wood-fired oven in time to see him score the pretzels (or not as he said it was a matter of personal preference) and hear most of his account of the tough love teaching methods of his German baking instructor.

I listened to a very interesting presentation by two high school students who won first place in the food science category at the 2013 Washington State Science and Engineering Fair for their project on fermentation and gluten.

I attended a lecture on natural leavening which went largely over my head but gave me the great pleasure of finally meeting microbiologist Debra Wink and hooking up again with Andrew Ross, professor of crop and soil science and food science at Oregon State University. I spent time with beloved friends, connected with other bloggers, met bakers, writers and Facebook friends I had never seen in person before, I took part in the Bread Lab's tasting of four different wheat varieties, all grown in the Skagit Valley, and I ate my way through three days of the most seductive event food imaginable.

Peach and bacon pizza

In between, I took pictures (or, shall I say, "gathered" images) with joyful abandon (making up for last year when my left arm was in a cast.) I will post some (okay, a lot) of them in the coming days. If there are any recipes you are specifically interested in on the basis of the photos, please let me know and I'll ask for permission to post them. As far as I know, no pizza recipe is available but from the look of the ones I saw, the only ingredient that appears absolutely necessary is a boundless imagination!

Related posts

• Kneading Conference West 2011
• Kneading Conference West 2012
• Kneading Conference West 2013

Kneading Conference West 2012

Don't you love it when you find yourself in a crowd of people and experience an overwhelming feeling of togetherness and belonging? I know I do although it doesn't happen to me very often because outside immediate circles of intimacy, love and friendship, I am usually an outsider looking in. Having now lived in the United States for as long as I have lived in France, I am truly bicultural. In practical terms it means that due to the twin sets of references I carry in my head and heart, I never completely blend in on either side of the Atlantic. Truth be told, I cherish (and maybe nurture) this internal divide: exile is very much my country of choice and I have come to rather enjoy the exquisite ache of nostalgia and longing, especially in today's connected world where the other side is only a click away.

Still I love to belong as much as the next person and at the Kneading Conference West, this  year as last year, I found myself both part of a larger whole and at one with it. Loosely defined, the Conference (co-sponsored in part by the Bread Bakers Guild of America) is a gathering of bakers (both home bakers and professionals), millers, growers and brewers all interested in bringing local grains back to their communities. Last year we mostly talked about reviving cultures which had thrived in the Pacific Northwest since the nineteenth century before agribusiness decided it would be more profitable for these grains to be grown on a massive scale in the Midwest. This year, we discussed moving forward and finding ways to sustain the renaissance of local grains overtime, be it wheat, barley, rye or spelt, to name only a few.

Having grown up on local food (my grandparents grew, raised and foraged for a large part of what we ate, not to mention the hunting for small game that went on in the fall in the nearby woods), I have a deep respect for terroir and man's connection to the land and I love it that there is a movement afoot in America away from industrial and processed food. I still remember my shock when we moved to New York in 1979 and I first saw baguettes at the supermarket. I picked one up from the bin where it stood, wrapped in plastic, among several other pale companions, I lifted it out. To my surprise and consternation, it bowed deeply forward and remained that way all the way home. Due to the then-prevalent preference for overmixing and fast fermentations, bread was generally mediocre in France at the time we moved, so it isn't as if I had left behind a continent of fragrant and crusty loaves. Still I had never seen such pliable bread and it was depressing. It took many years, the publication of Nancy Silverton's Breads of the La Bread Bakery and my discovery of levain before we had baguettes on the table again on a regular basis.

So the local theme is one which resonates with me but it wasn't until keynotes speakers Andrew Whitley of Bread Matters and Naomi Duguid, co-author (among many other books) of Flatbreads & Flavors: A Baker's Atlas - a book I own since 1997 and still always open with a sense of wonder - started talking about their experiences that it all coalesced in my mind. Nancy Silverton and many other talented bakers after her taught us traditional French methods of bread-baking focusing on gentle mixing and long fermentations. Such baking is mostly based on a type of flour that offers reasonably consistent results because it comes from a blend of grains chosen for their baking properties, that is to say commercial white flour.

If we want to use more local grains (and we do or we wouldn't have been attending the Conference), we must accept the fact that our bread may not turn out exactly the same day after day. To get as close as possible to the crumb and crust we like, we need to learn how to compensate for the variability built in local wheat. The good news, as Scott Mangold cheerfully put it during his excellent workshop on test baking local whole wheat flours, is that, in the process, we will become better bakers. But growing to love the taste and texture of these local breads as much as those of the white baguette we may still hold as a gold standard will require keeping an open mind and educating both ourselves, our families and our friends (in the case of the home baker) and our customers (in case of the professional baker). As we slowly incorporate more local whole grains into our baking, the payoff will be huge however in terms of flavor, diversity, nutrition and the environment.

The way I suddenly understood it, our new role, as bakers, is to build upon our knowledge of traditional French bread-baking to help strengthen and sustain our communities here in America. What could possibly induce a deeper sense of finally belonging in this French woman who emigrated from her native Paris years and years ago and now bakes in the Pacific Northwest?

Of course I am lucky to live in a part of the country where (although much remains to be done), grains are already being grown, milled and made accessible to local bakers and brewers. If such is not the case where you live but you have access to a spot where you can grow what you like, you may want to read Growing Small Grains in Your Garden by Bob Van Veldhuizen. "A summation of many years of agronomic research into growing grains in Alaska scaled down to the typical home garden," it might give you some ideas on ways to get your family to kick off the white flour habit, even if you only have a balcony and your crop yields one tiny loaf... Should you decide to embark on that particular project, you may also want to read William Alexander's 52 Loaves, the lively account of a home grower/miller/baker's odyssey.

This year as last year, the Conference took place on the charmingly bucolic grounds of Western Washington State University Mount Vernon Research and Extension Center. Chaired by Stephen Jones, the Center's Director, it offered many different lectures, classes and workshops, not to mention evening tastings of local beers and ciders and, on the very last afternoon, a tour of the Hedlin Family Farm, BreadFarm Bakery and Fairhaven Organic Flour Mill. I didn't do the tour but I took as many classes and attended as many lectures as possible and I will report here on what I saw and heard. So please stay tuned!

Related Farine posts: 
Andrew Whitley: Bread Matters (keynote address)
Naomi Duguid: Bread Over Time (keynote address)
Kneading Conference West 2011
Scott Mangold: Test Baking with Local Wheats for Home and Bakery
Finnish Barley Bread (ohrarieska) (a Naomi Duguid recipe)

Other related posts:
By breadsong : Kneading Conference West - Day 1, Day 2 & Day 3
By Floyd Mann (The Fresh Loaf): Kneading Conference West - Part 1 & Part 2
By Naomi Duguid: Notes from the Skagit Valley
By Rhona McAdam: Kneading with a k
By Teresa Greenway: Kneading Conference West - Part 1 & Part 2

After I throw in a couple of flatbread and cracker recipes, not to mention the formula for the powerfully seductive barley-cheese-and-aged cheddar bread baked at the Conference by Andrew Ross from a British recipe adapted by Hannah Warren, my hope is that you too will want to answer Naomi Duguid's call to bakers: "Go back to your home or bakery and add at least two products than contain whole grains to your repertoire as well as at least one item made largely with a grain other than wheat"... It may not sound like much but if we all do it and buy our grain locally, seeds of change will germinate in our communities and grow to make a real difference. 

Barley Bread

For as long as I can remember, I have been a barley girl. Of course it helped that in France when I was a kid,  a sucre d'orge (literally candy made with barley sugar) was a treat. Tubular and fashionably skinny, always tightly wrapped, most often in cellophane but occasionally in shiny silver paper which gave no clue to the flavor inside, known for having soothed many of life's minor woes and pains for generations of children, it held a mysterious appeal. By contrast, the plump sucette (lollipop), always clad in revealing colors and coiffed with a bouffant paper twist, seemed resolutely modern. Probably thanks to its down-to-earth chubbiness, it was often a kid's first choice at the boulangerie-confiserie (bakery-candy store) but not mine.
Since I spent a large part of my childhood reading and re-reading the books which had belonged to my dad and my uncle in their youth (they had won them at school for being top students), I kept solid footing in an enchanted other world (of which the black and white illustrations offered tantalizing glimpses) and, in my own, I looked for and cherished surviving signs of a vanishing past. Sucres d'orge (thus called because barley water -soon to be replaced by glucose- was the original sweetener) were therefore my favorites and I spent many a drizzly or blustery Sunday afternoon with my nose in one of the characteristic red books and a sucre d'orge in my pocket (my parents were not liberal with candy but since I never had a sweet tooth,  looking at it afforded me more pleasure than eating it and a single one went a long way).

Many years and a move across the ocean later, I discovered that orge (barley) could actually appear on the table in a soup or a barlotto (a risotto made with barley instead of rice) or simply as a grain and when I did, I fell in love all over again.  So when a Baking With Barley class was offered last year at Kneading Conference West, I knew I wanted to attend.
The class was taught jointly by Leslie Mackie (owner of Macrina Bakery in Seattle) and Andrew Ross, a cereal chemist at Oregon State University (OSU). Leslie has been experimenting with barley from the time she first started Macrina:  she liked using locally grown grain and, at the time, that meant mostly barley. She now puts it in monkey bread (for an added touch of sweetness), in Francese bread and in Pugliese bread (an exceptionally tasty miche for which she was in the process of developing a formula).
As for Andrew - who is not only a scientist but also a passionate baker - he has developed formulas for various barley breads within the framework of the barley project: he brought barley baguettes and barley miches to the class and demonstrated barley pitas and bretzels. I was hooked (especially when I discovered that my local mill made a beautiful whole grain barley flour).
I was hoping to be able to go and observe Andrew at work at OSU in Corvalis and to do a full Meet the Baker post on him afterwards. But it didn't work out according to plan. He was unexpectedly swamped with work when we showed up at the agreed-upon date last month and there was no way he could fit baking into his schedule on that particular day. As for us, we were traveling through Corvalis on our way back home from the coast and we couldn't possibly come back later in the week. He very kindly showed me his beautiful lab/bakery and answered the questions I had prepared but I made it quick as I knew he had to go back to work.  I would still love to see him bake and also to hear more about the relationship between the University and the local farmer though but it will have to wait. Maybe the stars will align better on another visit to Oregon!
Meanwhile Andrew gave me a few useful infos and pointers on baking with barley:

• The preferred barley is a hulless variety, also called naked barley (the hull falls off when the grain is harvested): it has the best nutritional profile
• Barley contains a soluble fiber called beta-glucan which has been shown to slow glucose absorption and is thought to help lower blood cholesterol
• People with celiac disease or high sensitivity to gluten should not eat barley: it contains protases which are very close to gluten
• A 100% barley starter yields a very acidic bread. Not pleasant
• The higher the percentage of barley in relation to wheat, the less extensible the dough
• For a better crumb, it is best to use barley flour in conjunction with high-gluten flour
• Using a stiff starter also helps compensate for the lesser amount of gluten in the dough
• To keep the dough from sticking, use more water or flour than you normally would 
• Increase dough hydration by 5 to 10% if making a 50% barley-50% wheat bread
• If using a high tpercentage of barley, it is best to underproof a little
• A good rule of thumb for flavor, nutrition and extensibility is to use a total of 20 to 30% of barley in the  dough
• Barley flat breads and tortillas are much easier to make than raised breads.

For this barley bread, I used the Whey Sourdough recipe from Emmanuel Hadjiandreou's How to Make Bread, a book I already blogged about here and here. At Emmanuel's suggestion (when we talked on the phone back in April after I found an error in one of the recipes), I substituted half Greek yogurt and half milk for the whey (which I didn't have) and, mindful of Andrew's recommendation, I replaced 20% of the white flour by whole grain barley flour (hulless variety).  The resulting bread was delicate and flavorful with a slightly fermented taste (very different from regular sourdough) which I find utterly seductive. Not a memory-trigger like the old-fashioned sucre d'orge but definitely a keeper and maybe a memory-maker for the kids and grand-kids in our life! What could be sweeter than that?

Ingredients:

• 160 g white sourdough starter
• 150 g milk (I used 2% milkfat)
• 150 g plain Greek yogurt (mine was 0% fat but regular fullfat Greek yogurt would work fine)
• 200 g all-purpose unbleached flour (Hadjiandreou uses bread flour with a higher gluten percentage but I had none on hand. I might have gotten a more open crumb if I had used that)
• 120 g  all-purpose unbleached flour (again he uses bread flour)
• 100 g barley flour
• 10 g salt (Hadjiandreou uses 8 g)

Method: (adapted from the book)

1. In a large mixing bowl, mix starter, yogurt and milk with a wooden spoon until well combined
2. Add 200 g of all-purpose flour and mix well. Cover and let ferment overnight in a cool place (it should show tiny bubbles 12 hours later when ready)
3. In a smaller bowl, mix 120 g of all-purpose flour, the barley flour and the salt
4. Add to fermented mix and mix by hand until it comes together
5. Cover and let stand for 10 minutes
6. After 10 minutes, stretch and fold the dough inside the bowl by going twice around the bowl with four stretches and foldings at each 90° turn (8 stretches/foldings in all)
7. Let rest 10 minutes again, covered. Repeat twice
8. Complete a fourth stretch and fold cycle and let the dough rest one hour, covered
9. Ligthly flour a work surgace and put the dough on it
10. Shape into a smooth, rounded disc
11. Dust a proofing basket with flour and lay the dough inside
12. Let it rise until double the size (which will take between 3 and 6 hours)
13. When ready, transfer dough to a non-preheated Dutch oven (using a large piece of parchment paper as a sling to carry the dough) and replace the lid on the Dutch oven
14. Bake in non-preheated oven set at 475°F/246°C for 35 minutes
15. Remove Dutch oven from oven and bread from Dutch oven (exercising caution as both will be very hot)
16. Replace bread in oven, turn oven temperature down to 435°F/224°C and bake for another 20 minutes or so, until the boule is golden and makes a satisfying hollow sound when thumped on the bottom
17. Enjoy!

The Barley Bread can also be baked the usual way in a hot oven. I just find the unheated Dutch oven/oven method works wonders with boules and it saves having to preheat the oven for an extended length of time.

The Barley Bread is going to Susan for this week's issue of Yeastspotting.