Baking With Whole Grains —
It has been rewarding to grow a variety of grains at Full Belly Farm, some to be fed to our livestock and some to sell to our customers. We grow wheat, corn and barley and sell them all in their whole kernel form as well as ground into flour. We have a small stone mill and have been processing the whole grains into flour in small batches, as needed. Freshly milled whole grains are known to be a great improvement over highly processed flours that have had their nutrients and fiber removed. High levels of starchy processed food in the western diet have been linked to several chronic diseases, especially diabetes, cardiovascular disease and colon-cancer.
As many of our customers know, we are sold out of our whole wheat flour, not just because there has been strong demand, but also because we lost 25-acres of heirloom wheat to the Sand Fire last June. We do still have Bloody Butcher Corn and Cornmeal and Purple Barley Berries and Flour. The purple barley is a variety originally from the Himalayas. Barley has been used as human food for thousands of years. It is a rich source of fiber and low in gluten.
People have asked us how to bake with the barley, so we asked our friend Frank Sally at Fournée Bakery how he would answer that question. Fournée is a wonderful artisan bakery and pastry shop located near the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley. Frank had been one of our best customers for our whole wheat flour. His answer was to develop two recipes using our barley flour, one for Barley Bread and the other for Barley Scones. These recipes are now available on our website for the bakers in our network. Thank you very much Frank!
The website also has a recipe for Marry Me Cornbread and instructions on how to use our pizza balls to make delicious pizza crust. We hope that kneading bread and baking pizza will provide a calming and creative influence for you. All of these products are available through your CSA account, at our farmers markets, and in our on-line store.
—Judith Redmond
