Luing sourdough uses grains that used to be grown on Luing, primarily barley and oats with a small amount of rye. In 1549 Luing was said to be ‘guid for corn’, and in 1772 Thomas Pennant described the island as almost entirely covered with excellent corn’. The word ‘corn’ historically denotes oats and barley, sometimes also rye. Until the eighteenth century, rent payments by tenants included quantities of bere (barley) and meal (oatmeal). For centuries rye was grown in small quantities in the Hebrides, often together with oats and barley as mixed crops. Bannocks of barleymeal, oatmeal or ‘mashlam’, a combination of grains, were once a staple food of the islanders. Though nowadays most of the land on Luing is cattle and sheep grazing, the gentle slopes and low-lying landscape would then have been covered with corn - whether oats or barley or rye - all through the summer months.
