Some popular Nuoro sayings about the preparation of flour and barley bread called 'orjàttu' or 'pàne de òrju', reveal with sufficient clarity what commitment this type of bread entailed. Although nutritious and good-tasting bread turned out to be, it did not fully repay the energy spent as much as wheat bread.

In fact, in the Nuoro and more generally Sardinian “wheat culture”, the consumption of wheat breads amply repaid, from a nutritional and psychological point of view, for the energy spent.

Barley bread, on the other hand, intended for the poor, for shepherds or peasants, was already considered second-class bread because of the diversity of the raw material (generally used for animal nutrition). For all these reasons, as soon as economic conditions changed, after World War II, its production declined rapidly in Nuoro and the surrounding area. Barley bread was prepared mainly by wealthy families, who used it for consumption by shepherds and dependent farmers.

The extremely volatile nature of the flour made it appropriate to have a small and isolated environment available in which to carry out the tumbling. The actual baking required the work of at least four women in addition to the baker; often these were numerous specialized workers who were paid with some of the bread produced and cheese.

The barley necessary for each baking (about 10/12 quintals) was cleaned by separating the chaff and the impurities using “su sedàttu” and “su chilìbru” (this operation was called “irgranzàre”), but unlike the wheat, it was not washed because the caryosis, impregnating itself with water, could not be ground properly. Sometimes the barley grains were lightly roasted in a hot oven just to facilitate grinding.

The milling took place eight, ten days before baking and care was taken to have the barley ground very carefully to increase its yield. The preparation of the flour began by separating the coarser bran (on ghilinzòne de òrju) using a special sieve (sedàttu 'e colàre); then, with another sieve (sedàttu 'e orjàtta), the coarser semolina (fàrre) was separated from the fine flour (pòddine). The latter was passed a second time through the same sieve, without having it completely filtered, with an operation called half a sieve (mesu sedattu), which made it possible to obtain a very fine flour (fine pòddine) that fell under the sieve; the larger one (on top of dust), remained in the sieve. The biggest semolina, obtained with the second operation, which also contained the thinnest bran, was still processed using a special sieve with a reed bottom (chilìbru) that was shaken and rhythmically rotated to isolate in the center the finer bran (ghilinzòne, farìna pro tìppe) and on the sides larger “su farre”, leaving the chosen barley semolina (on fàrre innettau) to fall under the sieve. For baking, “su fàrre innettau” and “su pòddine fìne” were used (a tenth of the total amount of flour was kept aside for use during the preparation of the sheets).

'Su ghilinzone' was fed to oxen and horses, everything else was used to make 'sa tìppe', bread for dogs. The difficulty of baking with barley flour is due to the very nature of the cereal, which contains little gluten compared to wheat; this results in a lower capacity to develop carbon dioxide during leavening and a lower elasticity of the dough obtained. Precisely to promote these conditions, it was essential, in a preliminary phase, to prepare “ghimisones”, large breads obtained by mixing the finest barley flour with warm water. The hemispherical shapes, weighing two or four kilograms (for two quintals of flour, two of about four kilos were needed) were cooked for a long time, in the oven cleaned of the grill, until the surface became hard and brown in color.

As soon as they were baked, the 'ghimisones' were placed in asphodel corbes - covered with flour and wrapped in linen, wool, cotton or hemp cloths (depending on the season) - and were made to 'mature' for five or six days. Each “ghimisone” was opened by making a transverse cut in the crust, thus obtaining two hemispherical parts containing a soft and creamy hazelnut-greyish compound; if the contents did not appear sufficiently “ripe”, that is, soft and elastic, it was gently mixed with the hands; then the “ghimisone” was closed and left to ferment again for 1/2 days.

The fermented creamy mixture was a pre-yeast that was dissolved in warm water and then mixed in the wooden cupboard (on làcu) with a part of the flour to promote subsequent leavening. The dough was then placed in cylindrical cork containers (malùnes), adding in the center the real yeast (on fermentàzu) dissolved in water and mixed with barley flour. The whole thing was left to rest for about 5 hours until the dough started to crack on the surface. At this point, the dough was still being worked in the cupboard, pressing it with clenched hands into a fist (pinching), gradually adding warm water to soften the dough. Everything was put back into the 'malùnes' where the maturation was completed in 3/5 hours.

After processing it again in the cupboard, the pasta was divided (orìre) into rounded portions of about a kilo from which as many breads would have been obtained. Each portion was placed on an oval wooden shovel (tabèdda) (about 80 x 50 cm), equipped with a short handle, and was carefully crushed with the hands until obtaining a thin sheet the size of the shovel. Given the poor elasticity of the dough, the dough could not be removed from the shovel on which it was formed, except by making it slip with skillful touches and in this way, in fact, it was passed to the baking machine (cochidòra) which, on its shovel equipped with a long handle (pàla 'e cochere), finished the shape of the pastry and regularized its thickness.

The pastry was immediately baked by sliding it onto the already hot oven surface with the embers and the burning branches collected on one side to promote, with constant heat, perfect cooking. As soon as it began to swell, it was pressed and turned over with an oval iron scoop with a long handle (palìtta 'e fèrru) to promote the diffusion of the hot steam that separated the pastry into two parts then, extracted while still swollen from the oven, it was quickly passed on a low table and opened there by sliding the knife along the edges (scopercàre); then the crumbs that might have remained were removed and then the two parts were superimposed one on the other (appiràre). The simultaneous presence of at least four people, in addition to the baking machine, was appropriate to avoid downtime between one batch and another. The baker inserted the breads two by two into the hot oven, without flame, using the same iron scoop, she quickly turned them over to make them biscuit (carasàre), then passed them to a table where they were folded two by two to be easily transported inside the saddlebags (bèrtulas) and the tascapane (taschèddas).

The barley bread prepared in this way was kept even for two months without going rancid and the baking generally respected this deadline; therefore, a fixed baking cycle was created that saw two or three families of neighbors or relatives alternating, who exchanged yeast and helped each other during preparation.
All the waste from flour preparation and processing residues were used to prepare “sa tippe”, the bread for shepherds' dogs.

(from F. R. Contu, “Barley bread in Nuoro”, in In the Name of Bread. Forms, techniques, occasions of traditional baking in Sardinia, Sassari, ISRE, 1991; the terms in the Sardinian language are in the Nuoro variant).