A friend sent me this interview knowing I love milling all sorts of grains: corn pancakes, rye chocolate chip cookies, etc.
This book looks neat, and I’ll be making the chocolate chip cookies with sorghum flour asap (recipe in the interview below)
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Thanks, Melissa. When I finally purchase a mill, I’ll also order this book. It was interesting that while we are rediscovering ancient grains, other countries have always been using them. I’m afraid that the major flour producers in the U.S. have “dumbed us down” for the past couple of generations in terms of our knowledge about, and experience with, the various grains and flours. If I knew six other bakers, I’d have a chocolate chip cookie party with each person bringing cookies made from a different ancient grain flour.
Richard
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I love that idea. Count me in.
There’s a blogger who does recipe testing parties – as in 12 different carrot cake recipes with many friends and scorecards 
https://www.thepancakeprincess.com/ I can’t imagine baking twelve cakes for a party and controlling all the non-recipe variables, but one batch of cookies is totally doable! And I’d totally enjoy designing the survey and making graphs.
I agree about there being so many grain traditions around the world and so much to learn. In this video about making an Ethiopian bread Difo Dabo, the baker puts garlic cloves on toothpicks (for later ease of removal) into her Teff starter. Someday I will find out more about this!
I decided to shop my pantry btw, and I’m doubling the cookie recipe with mostly barley and a little buckwheat. (Yet, I’m off to the store for chocolate anyway.) The Mockmill does make using all these grains easier.
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@Fermentada Melissa, I’m salivating! Those look scrumptious! I’d eat the whole batch in one sitting!
@Fermentada @evnpar @Leah1 I wish we all lived closer to each other, that chocolate chip cookie party with each of us baking with a different ancient grain would be a hell of a lot of fun. I love that idea.
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Thanks for this post, Melissa. I’m a little late reading it, but it’s timely for me because I just returned from my local grain farmer and mill with an order of grains for baking over the next several months and my order included 2 varieties of barley that they’ve just started growing. Mother Grains looks fascinating so I put it on my Wish List.
I came across your post as I was searching for a bread recipe that included barley flour. I thought I saw one posted previously, but can’t find it. Did I just imagine it? If not, can you point me in the right direction? Thanks!
Maybe this recipe/post which uses purple barley at 40% the total flour?
Great, thanks! I’m really surprised to see such a great rise with that much barley. That’s encouraging. I’m going to give it a try this week despite the 90+ outdoor temperature.
I’m very glad my AC is working! I started my barley bread early this a.m., just about to do the last stretch and fold. I decided to do 25% barley/75% whole wheat, both home milled, for a first attempt. I can’t wait to see how the barley affects the flavor and texture of the bread.
As long as I had the oven heated up for bread, I decided to mix up a batch of her rye chocolate chip cookies. I used home milled 100% whole grain rye flour. The only change I made to the recipe was to make each cookie only 25g rather than the 45g specified in the recipe. That ended up being a good decision because these cookies flattened out wafer thin. I was intrigued that the rye variant uses only 160g of flour while the original wheat/sorghum recipe uses 200+g. I also didn’t have chocolate chips so I chopped up some little bittersweet chocolate bars, using fewer grams than called for but still plenty. The cookies were delicious, but a bit on the greasy side, so next time I might use some more flour, hoping for a cakier, less greasy cookie. There’s not a lot of salt in the cookie dough, so the added salt on top was very nice.
Here’s the result of this mornings bake using 75% home milled whole grain Glenn wheat and 25% whole grain Shiloh Farms hull-less barley which I wanted to use up before using the new local grains. I was pleasantly surprised by the oven spring considering that it was 100% whole grain with 20% low gluten flour. The taste was very nice, not noticeably different from my usual loaves. Next time, I’ll use my locally grown barley and try upping the percentage.
I wonder if that’s a typo in the rye version of the recipe. Maybe it’s also a cookie batter that benefits from refrigeration before baking 
Your barley bread looks fantastic. Congratulations!
Oops, I just realized that I had a typo in my post. The original recipe used 200+g of flour, not 100! I’ve corrected it.
I don’t think it was a typo in her recipe because all the other grain variants use smaller amounts of flour too. I actually did refrigerate the dough overnight! Even refrigerated it felt too soft, but I always try to follow directions closely the first time, so I didn’t add any additional flour. Maybe it was because of my local rye flour, who knows, but the cookies tasted good enough to try again.
I figured you meant 200g. Perhaps she uses itty bitty eggs…there’s another hydration variable lol