Buckwheat Flour

Why buck-wheat flour is called farine de sarrasin—Saracen’s flour—I’m not sure. According to Alan Davidson, in his magnificent tome The Oxford Companion to Food, buckwheat, not actually a wheat but a plant related to sorrel and rhubarb, is of East Asian origin and over the centuries has crept westward through Russia and Germany, and eventually on to France and Spain. Curiously, the only region in France where it is still used with any regularity is in Brittany, the farthest from Eastern Asia. The Breton people are of Celtic origin. The Celts did at one time wander as far as Asia Minor, the stomping grounds of the Saracens. So even though the Saracens didn’t invade Brittany as they did Provence or Sicily, one wonders. Perhaps buckwheat flour stayed on in Brittany because it could be grown in Brittany’s stormy climate and difficult soil where other grains wouldn’t.