I got some Tibetan purple barley flour from Full Belly Farm in California. The dough was definitely purplish.
I used the Breadtopia standard recipe at 80% hydration. It came out pretty good, but the crazy thing was how much the bread held its shape for the final proof.
I usually do an overnight rise in the fridge, but I let it go all day as it seemed to rise so little. The dough was super-firm, so next time, I will try more water in the recipe. Will try it after it cools down!
I’m very curious because I did try to bake with barley for someone with diabetes and my experiments were not very successful. The bread was edible but not quite a success. More sour than others but the crumb was dry and heavy with almost no air pockets.
My biggest question: was this 100% barley flour? It does look more like a whole wheat bread than like a barley bread. Barley has almost no gluten, so it has some trouble rising/keeping a good structure. But if yours was 100% purple barley flour (a variety I didn’t try yet, I only tried regular and black) than I’ll be sure to shop for it.
Unless they mix the barley flour with something else at the farm…I a have a friend, far better baker than me, who did mill purple barley himself then baked bread out of it with an end result similar to mine.
This is 40% barley…I was worried it would not work out. I hydrated at 90%, so maybe a ton of water is needed. Even with 40% barley at 90% hydration, it was pretty stiff.