fermented barley!

Sadly I forgot to take pictures last night at my fermented barley celebration for lag b'omer.

But even without the pictures, I'll try to communicate to you how awesome the food was.

So the reason for the party was Lag B'Omer, a celebration day in the otherwise somewhat reflective and sober Omer Counting period. The Omer are sheathes of barley that a Jew in times past would bring to the temple to count the days between passover and the wheat harvest at Shavuot.

In my house we chose to celebrate by fermenting barley. People brought beers and I made sour dough barley pancakes. We also had a camp fire in this little BBQ outside in the backyard and got some makings for s'mores.

I refreshed the starter the night before and then mixed that with half bread flour and half local barley flour from Four Star Farms that had been coming in our farm share this winter. I also added in some cooked barley and wheat berries from said farm share that I blended up. That fermented for about 10 hours. Right before cooking them I added in some oil, maple syrup, salt, and baking soda. The baking soda helped neutralize some of the sour intensity and gave it extra levening in the meantime.

The pancakes turned out chewy on the inside and crispy on the outside, with a good balance of sweet, salty, and sour. They needed to cool a little bit before exhibiting a good texture, I think for the same reason why bread gets less gooey after it's been out of the oven for a while. Overall they were a huge success and I got many requests to make them again and have a brunch this summer. I'm psyched. Yom sour dough Pancake!