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| A field of Einkorn and Emmer Wheat I photographed growing at FarmEd. |
I'm having a thing with Doves Farm Organic Wholemeal Stoneground Einkorn Flour.
I've only rarely endorsed a product like I did with Hodmedod's delicious Carlin Peas. That's reserved for food so great that by eating it you're making the world a better place.
Einkorn wheat is an ancient grain that was originally harvested as many as 30,000 years ago. The USDA list it as having the following advantages over modern wheat: +44% Protein, +291% Riboflavin, +23% Vitamin B6, +290% Beta Carotene, +28% Iron, +3367% Vitamin A, +10% Manganese, and +250% Lutein. I swear that after eating it for a while you can really feel that nutrition bump.
Like many people are discovering about themselves, I'm a bit sensitive to gluten. Einkorn has less gluten which is also less complex, and consequently easier to digest. Of course, in the absence of that regular gluten, that means that it doesn't make such pillowy bread and pastry. Like, so what?
Because Einkorn hasn't been refined through breeding, it has a relatively simple 14 chromosomes (as opposed to Industrial Wheat's 42 chromosomes). All these factors define it as food which predates Industrial agriculture's meddling. Today's food, especially food which isn't grown organically, is not only doused with toxic chemicals, it's markedly less nutritious.
I'm thinking more and more about how that big shift in human behaviour from our traditional pre-Industrial lifestyle, to how we live today, is my real subject. The counterculture seems to me to be an inchoate yearning for that relatively recent lifestyle. It was a yearning for traditional non-hierarchical spiritual beliefs, truly "conventional" agriculture, natural food, and community living.
I really missed bread, and this has now become THE staple in my diet. I make a simple loaf with it once a week, and usually eat it twice a day. In due course I might figure out to make a sourdough loaf but right now that's beyond me.