Recipes · Barley quick bread

Barley karask

A quick barley bread raised with soda and soured milk, baked in a pan and eaten warm with butter.

Makes: One 22–24 cm round
Hands-on: 10 minutes
Start to finish: About 45 minutes
Oven: 200 °C

Karask is old farmhouse food: a barley bread with no yeast and no starter. Soured milk and baking soda make it rise in the oven, so it goes from bowl to table in under an hour. The crumb is soft and a little crumbly, and barley gives it a nutty, almost sweet taste.

Every family seems to have its own version. Some add an egg and some do not; some fold in fried bacon, which turns it into a meal. This is the plain one I make most often.

Method

Heat the oven to 200 °C and butter a 22–24 cm round tin or a cast-iron frying pan.
Whisk the barley flour, wheat flour, soda, salt and sugar together in a bowl.
Beat the kefir with the egg, pour it into the dry ingredients with the melted butter and stir only until combined. The batter should be thick but spreadable, like a heavy pancake batter. Do not overmix.
Scrape it into the pan, smooth the top and bake straight away for 30–35 minutes, until golden brown and a skewer pushed into the middle comes out clean.
Let it cool in the pan for ten minutes, then cut it into wedges and eat it warm, with plenty of butter.

Notes

For the bacon version, fry 100–150 g of diced smoked bacon until crisp and fold it into the batter, using some of its fat instead of part of the butter.
Soda starts working the moment it meets the soured milk, so have the oven hot before you mix.
Karask is best on the day it is made. Leftover wedges are good warmed in a dry frying pan.