Spelt: history and properties of the cereal
Today Faribon starts a series of articles in which we will tell you more about the cereals you can use to mill your fresh flour in your kitchen!
The firs one is spelt, a wheat with the “dress” as husks are kept during threshing, so the grain is protected till the end, unlike hard and soft wheat.
Let’s find out where this cereal came from
It comes from the Middle East, precisely in the area of the Fertile Crescent (between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Palestine) where it was still cultivated 10,000 years ago.
Then we find spelt as food for Roman legionnaires who received one handful each, and then they used to crash it (the famous broken spelt). Then they cooked it in water to prepare the ancestor of the polenta of our days. It seems that the name flour comes from spelt (in Latin “Far”) but later on, flour was preferably produced with cereals more suitable for intensive cultivation.
Today there are many types of spelt on the market: einkorn, dicoccum and spelta. We can say that the einkorn is the most valuable, the dicoccum the most cultivated in our country while the spelta often comes from northern Europe.
Few facts about einkorn - history and properties of the cereal
Einkorn is the finest spelt, the small and ancient spelt that came down to us from Anatolia. The oldest spelt that at the beginning was the wild spelt, called for this “the father of all wheat”. Later on, after the mixing of different types of spelt, soft, hard wheat and dicoccum born.
Monococco, its name encloses the meaning, "small grain" or "for small ear". In addition to being small it is also the most valuable because it takes eleven months for it to be ready.
This is why during the Bronze Age its cultivation was abandoned for other types of cereals more resistant and with a faster growth. In the last few years, however, it is back in vogue because it is poor in gluten and rich in minerals such as iron, zinc, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus. The monococco is particularly digestible because it contains few starches and is rich in beta carotene and vitamin E.
How to use einkorn spelt for your recipes? Being the gluten-poor monococco is not recommended for making bread, unless it is mixed with a strong flour. Wonderful instead in tarts, biscuits, cakes in general, because it is crumbly, tasty and has a beautiful yellow color.
Something about dicoccum spelt - history and properties of the cereal
It is the best known and most cultivated spelt in Italy, its flat spike contains two grains. Have you already heard of the famous dicoccum/dicocco of Garfagnana? Among other properties, dicoccum contains a lot of magnesium. Of course, to get the maximum benefit it is good to use the whole grain as always. In addition, preferring spelt dicoccum over a hard or soft wheat means to have more mineral salts and also beta-glucans.
How to use the dicoccum spelt in the kitchen? It can be used like any other good flour, always preferring wholemeal types. And it is here that Faribon is the perfect ally in the kitchen. Of course, the bean is fantastic in soups, soups, salads.
Something about spelta – history and properties of the cereal
It’s called Triticum Spelta, ancestor of wheat, grown over eight thousand years ago in southwestern Asia, in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East.
Introduced in Europe, it was one of the first Neolithic cereals. Spelt was thus found also in the Neolithic centers of Veneto Region, in an important sacral archaeological complex dating from 3000 to 2300 BC. Even the Lombards probably used spelta to produce beer. A cultivation that therefore has its roots in the mists of time.
Spelta is usually extraordinary for its fibre and riboflavin content, a substance essential to energy metabolism. Try the spelt Spelta in your dishes and you will discover its unique taste. So choose a good bean and then a grain grinder. Faribon is the electric grain grinder that in one step separates bran and flour and thus keeps intact the nutritional properties of the whole grain and allows us to always have a fresh flour if necessary.
A brief guide:
Get yourself a good grain of organic spelt that can be:
Spelt: preserves intact the "film" that surrounds the grain.
Pearl spelt: is the refined cereal, that is without bran and germ.
Dehusked spelt: the grain has undergone an initial refining process in which it loses part of the bran and keeps intact germs and endosperm, rich in