What Was Barley? The Peasant Grain That Grew Where Wheat Refused To
Medieval Way
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Norfolk, England, in April, around the year thirteen hundred. A man walks the headland of the biggest field on the manor. It is not wheat. It is barley, and across eastern England barley took more ground than any other crop. He is not going to make bread out of it. Almost nobody in that village will. Barley bread existed, and it was the loaf you ate when the wheat had failed. So a village puts its best spring ground into a grain it does not want on the table. That is not poverty. That is a choice. And the manor accounts show where the barley actually went. Not to an oven. To a kiln.
Tonight we follow that grain out of the field and into the kiln, in three questions. Why barley grew where wheat would not. Why it made bad bread on purpose. And what the kiln turned it into.
19 Comments
It is a short-season crop, so it can be reliably grown when the forecast for Spring rains is uncertain. It is also less reliant on expensive inputs, so the financial risk of growing it is lower. And yes, it is primarily grown for animal use. Not because I run a feedlot, but because I need stored grain as a reserve of fodder for poor seasons.
The only thing that I suggest that this video did not emphasise, is the degree to which livestock were kept indoors over the winter months, and fed stored hay and grain. In high latitudes, stock cannot graze due to snow on the ground and must be hand-fed. Whether they are kept in barn, byre or the other end of the the long-house, barley is an excellent grain for supplementing hay. It stores well and the nutritional content suits cattle, sheep, horses and pigs. ….. and yeah, those animals are really good ways to convert something we don’t really like to eat, to one of the highest-value foods. Meat!
Let's see if I am right
What Was Barley? The Peasant Grain That Grew Where Wheat Refused To
Medieval Way
30,713 views
► Get our medieval cookbooks & guides here: https://medievalway.store/bakery
Norfolk, England, in April, around the year thirteen hundred. A man walks the headland of the biggest field on the manor. It is not wheat. It is barley, and across eastern England barley took more ground than any other crop. He is not going to make bread out of it. Almost nobody in that village will. Barley bread existed, and it was the loaf you ate when the wheat had failed. So a village puts its best spring ground into a grain it does not want on the table. That is not poverty. That is a choice. And the manor accounts show where the barley actually went. Not to an oven. To a kiln.
Tonight we follow that grain out of the field and into the kiln, in three questions. Why barley grew where wheat would not. Why it made bad bread on purpose. And what the kiln turned it into.