How it's Spelt
Spelt has risen to a new prominence in the last few years, breaking out of historic and health-food obscurity to appear on supermarket shelves and restaurant menus. An old wheat variety, spelt has attractions including digestibility for quite a few people with forms of wheat intolerance (not coeliacs).
It would be easier to expand on the merits of spelt, however, if we knew exactly which grain we were talking about. In fact the revival of "spelt" involves a number of different old wheat varieties being marketed under the same name. Spelt isn't necessarily spelt at all.
This confusion arises from two sources. One is that different languages use words for grains that are not exactly equivalent. The key example is the Italian word farro, translated on those multiplying packages of pasta in speciality foodstores, and in restaurants too, as "spelt". However farro is not a botanically exact term, and includes not only spelt (triticum spelta) but emmer wheat (t. dicoccum) and einkorn (t. monococcum). Italian culture and tradition use the same word to describe all three. This is probably because of their common "hulled" character; that is, the husk of these three wheats is not shed at harvest, as it is for modern bread wheat, t. aestivum. In fact most farro seems to be emmer, not spelt.
The other reason for confusion is that there is some real doubt about the strict botanical categories and the genetic make-up of these various grains. The family trees (stalks?) of these grains are not linear, but involve complex histories of hybridization, cultivation and then further cross-fertilization.
My limited experience and research suggests that spelt flour for sale as such probably is spelt in the stricter sense (t. spelta). Here in Australia I have bought, or seen for sale, spelt grown in Canada, Germany and three parts of Australia: Victoria, Queensland and South Australia (I note that in Germany the local dialectic term Dinkel seems to be a clearer equivalent to the English "spelt" than is farro). But your Italian products such as pasta, farro spezzato (crushed grain for soups) and such are as likely to be emmer.
So spelt is again being reinvented, as a sort of modern foodie category that draws together a couple of different botanical and ethnobotanical categories. It may be confusing in some settings, but in a way this conflation of grains and meanings mirrors the earlier hybridity of the cultivation of wheats.
I will write more about the use of spelt (etc.) in baking and otherwise in future posts.
It would be easier to expand on the merits of spelt, however, if we knew exactly which grain we were talking about. In fact the revival of "spelt" involves a number of different old wheat varieties being marketed under the same name. Spelt isn't necessarily spelt at all.
This confusion arises from two sources. One is that different languages use words for grains that are not exactly equivalent. The key example is the Italian word farro, translated on those multiplying packages of pasta in speciality foodstores, and in restaurants too, as "spelt". However farro is not a botanically exact term, and includes not only spelt (triticum spelta) but emmer wheat (t. dicoccum) and einkorn (t. monococcum). Italian culture and tradition use the same word to describe all three. This is probably because of their common "hulled" character; that is, the husk of these three wheats is not shed at harvest, as it is for modern bread wheat, t. aestivum. In fact most farro seems to be emmer, not spelt.
The other reason for confusion is that there is some real doubt about the strict botanical categories and the genetic make-up of these various grains. The family trees (stalks?) of these grains are not linear, but involve complex histories of hybridization, cultivation and then further cross-fertilization.
My limited experience and research suggests that spelt flour for sale as such probably is spelt in the stricter sense (t. spelta). Here in Australia I have bought, or seen for sale, spelt grown in Canada, Germany and three parts of Australia: Victoria, Queensland and South Australia (I note that in Germany the local dialectic term Dinkel seems to be a clearer equivalent to the English "spelt" than is farro). But your Italian products such as pasta, farro spezzato (crushed grain for soups) and such are as likely to be emmer.
So spelt is again being reinvented, as a sort of modern foodie category that draws together a couple of different botanical and ethnobotanical categories. It may be confusing in some settings, but in a way this conflation of grains and meanings mirrors the earlier hybridity of the cultivation of wheats.
I will write more about the use of spelt (etc.) in baking and otherwise in future posts.
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