Wheat Knowledge for Personal Chefs by Ruth Paget
Ellen King, author and owner of Chicago’s Hewn bakery, explains what driving the Heritage Baking Movement in the Midwestern US and her bakery’s role in it in her cookbook Heritage Baking.
King generally describes Heritage Wheat as wheat grown in the United States before World War II.
She continues on to describe landrace wheat as a type of heritage wheat that is grown in a region for decades even hundreds of years. Landrace wheat adapts to a region’s environment without need for chemical fertilizers and pesticides according to her.
King also notes that heritage wheat differs from Biblical or ancient grains like einkorn, spelt, and emmer although these are used in the Midwest as well.
Wheat has two seasonal divisions: spring and winter, which refers to growing and harvesting seasons. Spring wheat is planted in spring and harvested in summer. Winter wheat is planted in fall and goes dormant in winter. In spring, winter wheat grows again and is harvested in summer.
Different varieties of spring and winter wheat have varying characteristics, which can be summarized as follows:
*Hard Red Winter (HRW)
-high protein
-high gluten
-best for bread and all-purpose flour
*Hard Red Spring (HRS)
-high protein
-high gluten
-best for use in bread and brioche
*Soft Red Winter (SRW)
-lower protein
-lower gluten
-best for pastries and all-purpose
*Soft Red Spring (SRS)
-lower protein
-lower gluten
-best for blending with hard wheat to increase protein
*Soft White
-low protein
-low gluten
-best for non-bread recipes and pastry
King writes that home bakers can obtain great results baking by milling their own wheat berries into flour. She points out that the nutritive germ and endosperm of the wheat berry are coated by an equally nutritive bran.
Milling extracts these three items in different percentages. What you want to achieve is a high extraction value in milling, which indicates that large amounts of bran, germ, and endosperm have been retained in the flour.
Once you have your flour, King counsels readers to make a starter (also called a sourdough starter, levain, leaven, or a “mother”) that will be added as a natural wild yeast to additional flour, water, and salt in basic bread recipes.
When you have a good starter, you add this to your recipe ingredients and allow them to rise before kneading the dough. King provides step-by-step photos showing how to knead dough.
There are many bread recipes in Heritage Baking, but the four recipes that I have made that I think are good ones to begin baking with follow:
-basic bread loaf
-cheddar loaf (My Wisconsin family makes this with the addition of red pimiento peppers)
-cinnamon buns (I prefer to buy these, but they are a good activity to do on “snow days” when school is closed.)
-brioche (I made brioches in Stuttgart, Germany when I lived there, because one of my husband’s aunts worked as a bakery manager in Tours, France and was a master brioche baker.)
Ellen King’s Heritage Baking is a treasure trove of delicious and nutritious bread recipes and a go-to reference for wheat knowledge for personal chefs who want to expand their dish portfolios to offer clients.
Happy Baking!
By Ruth Paget
-author Eating Soup with Chopsticks, Marrying France, and Europe’s Lessons written during overseas duty in Germany + 5 other Kindle books
-developer of the Novgorod and Bento War Games + 8 Classical Western Civilization War Games
-developer of food and beverage knowledge games
-creator of online exhibits about San Miguel Arcangel Mission, French baguette making, and the Carmel Valley History Center
-creator of French travel and culture games
-writer of 2000+ Central Coast California lifestyle blogs
-family genealogist
-developer of 9 music theory games
