Barley Biscuits

Manna from Heaven would be so lovely, in my opinion. We’ve had such a snow-laden winter, that the poor chickens haven’t wanted to free range much. Why bother when the ground is covered with cold, white stuff, right? Sometimes I walk through the drifting snowflakes to do my twice a day chores, and dream of manna. Yes. If those snowflakes were only manna, I’d never again have to pay organic feed prices for my flock!

I did have a manna experience this past week, when our Bible study friends came by and blessed us with their stash of organic grains, and even several bags of milled flour, kinds I’d always wanted to experiment with, but hadn’t yet! Hard red winter wheat, millet, rye, barley, spelt–which is one of our all time favorite grains!  Sadly, my friend is giving me these things because her young son has been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes…and because of this awesome site’s life changing info: Living Without Type 1, she is finding great success in eliminating grains and dairy from their diet. I encourage you to check the site out yourselves, it’s amazing, people are dealing with Type 1 by changing their diets–eliminating grains, dairy, going raw and organic and as a result, no more insulin shots! This is the delight of  “food therapy”–as opposed to drug therapy, check it out!

So tonight we gave barley flour a try…and WOW! We are hooked…fly thee to thy nearest health food store, get some barley flour and hie thee home to bake these…

Barley Biscuits–makes 9-10 biscuits

1. Blend the following dry ingredients in a mixing bowl:

• 2 cups barley milled from whole barley (or buy barley flour)
• 4 tsp baking powder (I recommend low sodium and aluminum free)
• 1 1/2 tsp salt (we love Farmer John’s “real salt”)

2. Blend together in separate bowl:

• 1 egg, well beaten
• 1 cup buttermilk (I keep powdered buttermilk on hand, as well as kefir which can be substituted for buttermilk)
• 1 1/2 TB oil
• 1 1/2 TB melted butter, unsalted

Or, instead of separating the last two ingredients, you could use 3 TB oil, or 3 TB melted butter–but it’s delicious half and half.

3. Blend liquid ingredients into dry ingredients just until mixed. Dough will be quite soft, like batter, and very light.

4. Drop spoonfuls of batter on lightly greased cookie sheet or stoneware, and bake in preheated oven at 400 degrees for 12-15 minutes until lightly golden on the bottom.

These are the fluffiest, lightest, whole grain biscuits ever–with delicious taste that will appeal to the whole family!

(and while you eat them, pretend you’re one of the 5,000 being fed on five small barley loaves and two fish…)

Next thing I want to try…Ezekiel bread!