Black Barley Rings

Least year I learned the hard way to dunk the barley rusks from the Greek festival as I broke my tooth on one. This recipe intrigued me.The dough worked up like Playdough, soft and sticky, but still crumbly. Once again, patting out the dough was frustrating and the rolling pin made quick work of it. However my pieces were 9 X 4 " in size, smaller than her 6 X 12", but just as thick. I did not use wheat flour so as to keep them gluten-free. I found her directions to make the rings confusing, but pried up the long edges, carefully rolled them to the middle, pinched the edges together and then gently rolled the log form to try and achieve a cylinder shape and the pinched the ends together to form rings. Six fit on a pan, but I would have needed more pans if I had made them as big as she suggested, which would have made the long baking times problematic. I am not sure why you cool them, before drying them at 200 for seven hours. I did try them periodically. They were raw inside before drying, tasted rich and tasty at 2 hours of drying, and at 5 hours tasted more like dog biscuits (yes, I really liked them when I was 4 years old) and just like the barley rusks from the Greek festival so I took them out after 5 hours. I still don't know why they are called black. Because of the addition of the oil, they did not seem tough enough to break a tooth.