Eat This Podcast

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Durum wheat is only about 5% of the total wheat harvest around the world. For those of us who like our pasta, that’s a very important 5%. Different gluten proteins make a durum dough stretchy rather than elastic — perfect for pasta. The kernels are very hard and need dedicated milling machinery, which produces small granules — semolina — rather than flour. That, however, may be about to change.

Photo of Soft Svevo from USDA, Pullman, WA.

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The one process in the whole business of turning wheat into bread when time is of the essence is the harvest. It’s back-breaking work, and the slightest delay can ruin the quality of the grain. In Europe, a ready supply of peasants got the job done. In America, labour, especially in the newly settled midwest, was extremely scarce. Inventors had to come up with machines.

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An enormous amount of wheat, roughly one fifth of the total harvest, is traded internationally between countries and, as might be expected, if the supply falls, prices rise. Given the strategic importance of wheat, countries try to ensure that they have an adequate supply, even when doing so actually makes things worse, at least in the short term.

Wheat links a drought in China to the fall of Egypt’s government in the Arab Spring of 2011.

Photo by Daniel Duvivier.

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The very first English law about food regulated the size of a standard loaf of bread. The Assize of Bread and Ale kept the price constant, but that price bought more or less bread depending on the price of wheat. It never was a very useful system, for bakers or bread buyers, but it survived from at least 1266 until 1836 and provides an opportunity to consider a pound of silver versus a pound of bread.

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The one thing to be thankful for in the rise of fast factory bread is that it prompted the resurgence of small, artisan bakers. They have been goaded to produce breads that are better in every way than even the best breads of years gone by. It may seem at times if their focus is on traditions from time immemorial. It isn’t.

Because aside from taking time, what they are doing isn’t all that traditional.