As a domestic baker, you might be used to simply grabbing a bag labelled “bread flour” or “strong white flour”, and sachets of fast-action dried yeast. As your baking develops, you might want to think and learn more about what you’re baking with, so here are some points to set you off on that path. There are many ingredients that can be used when making Real Bread but here are some notes on the main ones.
The Wheat Family
Rather than being just one type of grain, wheat is a whole family (the genus Triticum ) of species and sub species. While varieties of common or bread wheat (Triticum aestivum ) account for over 90% of world wheat production, other cultivated wheats include:
Durum wheat (T. durum or T. turgidum durum ) is commonly used for pasta, but also for some types of bread.Einkorn (T. monococcum ) was one of the first domesticated cereals.Emmer (T. dicoccum ), sometimes called farro (e.g. in Tuscany), was another of the first domesticated cereals, though probably later than einkorn.Kamut is a trademarked brand name for one variety of khorasan .Khorasan (T. turanicum or T. turgidum subsp. turanicum ) is a high-protein wheat, originally thought to have been bred in ancient Egypt.Spelt (T. spelta or T. aestivum var. spelta ) is apparently becoming ever-more popular, particularly for bread making.
None of the above are gluten free, and so they are not suitable for people with coeliac disease. That said, there are differences between the make-up of their gluten and that of bread wheat. Some people with a professionally diagnosed allergy or an intolerance (neither of which is the same as coeliac disease, which is an auto-immune condition) to bread wheat report that they have fewer, or no, problems digesting products made from other members of the wheat family. There are also suggestions that the older wheats above may have higher levels of certain micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) than modern bread wheats. The same may go for older varieties (or cultivars) of T. aestivum , sometimes known as heritage wheats.
