Archive Recipe: Barley Pancakes

This recipe for Barley Pancakes with Orange Juice and Vanilla has been the most commonly viewed recipe in The Messy Apron Archives for several years. I hope that a lot of you who have visited that post have also tried and enjoyed this ultimately yummy breakfast recipe. The warm, earthy, malty taste of whole grain barley flour deserves to be considered for popular appreciation, and a nice batch of pancakes is a simple and satisfying way to give it a chance.

I received a super-generous gift of homemade maple syrup from my cousin recently, which I took as a sign from the Universe that I needed to get back to this pancake recipe. Great syrup deserves great pancakes! And, if nothing else, such a popular recipe deserves some new photo images, hopefully better ones than what I was able to capture back in 2011. Really, though, the fact that these are just really, really good pancakes should be enough reason for me to be making them more often than I do. I feel a considerable amount of shame.

I don’t see any reason to mess around with this recipe, so I have presented it here as I did originally. Perhaps these pancakes would also be great with some grated orange zest mixed into the batter (grate the zest off the orange before squeezing it for the juice in the recipe), or maybe with some finely chopped walnuts or pecans sprinkled onto each pancake as it cooks. I haven’t tried these variations yet. If you get a chance to before I do, be sure to tell me how delicious they are!

I don’t know that I will ever really run out of new recipes to try, whether they’re good candidates for a The Messy Apron post or not. I’m finding that I do need to exercise some caution, however, as I explore and report on those new horizons. It would be a real shame to lose track of all my good old favorite recipes, or to never revisit something truly delicious. And a warm malty pancake scented with orange and vanilla should be revisited as often as possible.

Barley Pancakes with Orange Juice and Vanilla
Adapted from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking

6 ounces by weight (about 170 g) whole barley flour (about 1 ½ cups)
2 teaspoons (10 ml) baking powder
¼ teaspoon (1 ml) baking soda
¾ (about 3 ml) teaspoons salt
3 large eggs
3 tablespoons (1 ½ ounces by weight or 40 g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 tablespoons (30 ml) honey
¾ cup (6 fluid ounces or 175ml) milk
½ cup (4 fluid ounces or 125 ml) fresh orange juice
1 teaspoon (5 ml) vanilla extract

1. Preheat an electric griddle to 300 F (150 C) (or preheat a skillet or griddle on the stove over medium heat.) In a medium-size bowl, whisk together the barley flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

2. In another medium-size bowl, beat the eggs with a whisk. Slowly whisk in the butter. Whisk in the honey. Whisk in the milk, orange juice and vanilla.

3. Pour the egg mixture over the barley flour mixture and stir until just combined. Spray the heated pan with cooking spray or brush it with oil or butter. Spoon or pour about ¼ cup (50 ml) of the pancake batter for each (4-inch or 10 cm) pancake, placing as many on the pan as will fit with room to spread and flip. Cook the pancakes until they are brown on the pan side 3-4 minutes. Flip the pancakes with a spatula and cook on the other side until golden brown, about 2-3 minutes more.

4. Keep completed pancakes warm in the oven until ready to serve. Serve with butter and maple syrup, or other favorite pancake accompaniments.

Makes about 12 (3 ½ -4-inch) pancakes.

Other recipes like this one: Barley Flour Scones, Light Wheat and Cinnamon Waffles, Orange Millet Waffles, Butter Pecan Pancakes

Barley Flour Scones

I always have big ideas. Big ideas like cooking my way all the way through a great cookbook, tasting every recipe, and having the time of my life. My big ideas rarely survive contact with reality, however, and so my wonderful cookbooks get put aside, victims of busy schedules and procrastination.

The good news is that I did finally get a chance to try another recipe from a book I’d love to bake my way through, Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce. (These bars were based on a recipe in this book, as was the multigrain flour mix that I used in these baguettes and this zucchini cake.) I baked a version of the scones in the barley chapter, made with whole grain barley flour and just a touch of brown sugar.

I simplified both the ingredients and the procedure for this recipe. I just kept the scones basic, without the baked-in layer of jam in the original recipe (although that would be great, too), and I made the dough in the food processor. I like to make scone doughs with the food processor, possibly because I’m a little lazy, but more likely because I’m impatient (and busy), and excited to taste final products without having to wait too long.

These scones are wonderfully delicious! They mostly taste of barley flour, which is almost toasty and a little nutty. It’s mild enough that you can also taste the butter and a pleasant hint of salt. There’s just enough brown sugar in the mix to enhance the other flavors rather than make things especially sweet. The scones are pleasantly crumbly, but hold together very well at the same time. Their relative simplicity also makes them great vehicles for fruity jams or lemon curd.

I love to have something quick to grab in the morning when I wake up and stumble my way to the coffee pot. These scones are perfect for that, with the delicate barley flour flavor giving me something delicious to contemplate as I try to wake up. They’re also great afternoon snacks, of course, and, most important, they’re a delicious stop on my slow but determined journey of big ideas.

Barley Flour Scones

Adapted from Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons barley flour

1 cup all-purpose flour

¼ cup dark brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon fine salt

1 stick (4 ounces) cold, unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

½ cup buttermilk

1 large egg

Coarse sugar for sprinkling

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Set aside.

2. In the bowl of a food processor, combine the barley flour, all-purpose flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Pulse a few times to mix well.

3. Add the cold butter pieces to the flour mixture. Pulse several times until the butter is mostly in pea-size chunks and well-coated with the flours.

4. In a small bowl, whisk together the buttermilk and egg until smooth. Add to the mixture in the food processor. Process just until the mixture can hold together when squeezed. Transfer the crumbly dough onto a well-floured surface.

5. Gently knead the dough together and press into a disk roughly 7 inches in diameter and ¾ inch thick. Cut the disk into 8 equal triangles. Transfer the unbaked scones to the prepared baking sheet. Sprinkle each with coarse sugar.

6. Bake at 350 F for 20-25 minutes or until the scones appear dry and lightly golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Enjoy slightly warm or cool completely. Store at room temperature in an airtight container for a day or two or freeze for a month or so.

Makes 8 scones.

Other recipes like this one: Barley Pancakes with Orange Juice and Vanilla, Cherry Almond Scones, Cranberry Orange Oatmeal Scones

One year ago: Rosemary Focaccia, Oatmeal Pecan Chocolate Chip Bars

Barley Pancakes

If I’m going to have a fresh, hot, made-from-scratch breakfast, it’s going to have to be later in the morning. As much as I’d like to be a morning person, I have to admit that nothing much is going to happen until I’ve employed several means of shaking off my bleary crabbiness and yanked myself into an appropriate condition for handling kitchen implements.

When this late-morning breaking of my night-long fast is finally accomplished, therefore, I’m hungry. I’m too hungry to fiddle around with any delays like a 15 minute rest of a pancake batter. Especially if said pancake batter also contains fresh orange juice and I just spent several minutes squeezing oranges. Compromises are going to have to be made.

This whole adventure began with a small bag of whole barley flour (Bob’s Red Mill brand) that I bought to try a bread recipe that didn’t quite work out (unless I begin a collection of doorstops.) While I’ve since made some progress with that bread, I thought I’d also try a barley pancake recipe from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking to help me use up the rest of the bag of barley flour. This book promotes the virtues of combining whole grains and orange juice, and I think they’re not wrong, but I wasn’t willing to take the 15-minute journey with them when it came to resting a pancake batter. Also, in the original recipe the leavening (baking powder) was added to the batter after the resting period, and I just couldn’t see myself getting that mixed in properly, at least not before breakfast.

So I skipped that whole section of the professionally written and tested instructions. Lightning didn’t strike me down. I didn’t even make bad pancakes. In fact, these were very good pancakes. They smelled delicious while cooking, which took place over a longer time and at a lower temperature than I usually use for pancakes (I heeded the professionals here and I’m glad I did.)

It must have been the unique combination of the slightly nutty whole barley flour, orange juice, vanilla and honey that gave these pancakes such a nice aroma (which made me even hungrier) and their flavor was as good as their smell. The texture of the pancakes was also quite nice. They’re not as fluffy as white-flour buttermilk pancakes, but are by no means dense or overly coarse. I don’t know what more I could hope for in a whole grain pancake. Perhaps if I rested the batter I’d achieve some kind of whole-grain pancake Nirvana? Unless that perfect pancake also magically turns me into someone who faces each day with energetic cheer immediately upon waking, it may not be worth my time.

Barley Pancakes with Orange Juice and Vanilla
Adapted from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking

6 ounces by weight (about 170 g) whole barley flour (about 1 ½ cups)
2 teaspoons (10 ml) baking powder
¼ teaspoon (1 ml) baking soda
¾ (about 3 ml) teaspoons salt
3 large eggs
3 tablespoons (1 ½ ounces by weight or 40 g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 tablespoons (30 ml) honey
¾ cup (6 fluid ounces or 175ml) milk
½ cup (4 fluid ounces or 125 ml) fresh orange juice
1 teaspoon (5 ml) vanilla extract

1. Preheat an electric griddle to 300 F (150 C) (or preheat a skillet or griddle on the stove over medium heat.) In a medium-size bowl, whisk together the barley flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

2. In another medium-size bowl, beat the eggs with a whisk. Slowly whisk in the butter. Whisk in the honey. Whisk in the milk, orange juice and vanilla.

3. Pour the egg mixture over the barley flour mixture and stir until just combined. Spray the heated pan with cooking spray or brush it with oil or butter. Spoon or pour about ¼ cup (50 ml) of the pancake batter for each (4-inch or 10 cm) pancake, placing as many on the pan as will fit with room to spread and flip. Cook the pancakes until they are brown on the pan side 3-4 minutes. Flip the pancakes with a spatula and cook on the other side until golden brown, about 2-3 minutes more.

4. Keep completed pancakes warm in the oven until ready to serve. Serve with butter and maple syrup, or other favorite pancake accompaniments.

Makes about 12 (3 ½ -4-inch) pancakes.

Other recipes like this one: Coconut Pineapple Pancakes, Apple Cinnamon Pancakes

One year ago: Almond Butter Granola Bars