Breaking bread: a guide to ancient grains

Rye bread is a common sight in British bakeries today, but that wasn’t always the case. Thought to have originated as a wild crop in Turkey (where evidence of the crop has been found in Neolithic excavations), it became a popular crop to grow throughout eastern and central Europe. Germany, Russia and Poland were the biggest producers of rye from the Middle Ages onwards, and it was a rare sight in the UK until around thirty years ago.

Today, rye breads have gained popularity as they’re often moister, longer-lasting and denser than loaves made with modern wheat. There’s the German pumpernickel, which is a dense brick of a loaf made with coarsely ground rye grains that has a sweet, malty flavour. You can also use rye to create a sourdough bread that sacrifices lightness for a more pronounced flavour and fuller texture. In Scandinavia, crispbreads (known as knäckebröd in Sweden) are made with rye flour, and because rye bread is high in fibre, low in gluten and has a lower glycemic index than regular white bread, it’s particularly popular with the health-conscious. Rye flour can be bought as either a white flour, which will result in a lighter coloured loaf with a less pronounced flavour, or as a dark (or wholemeal) flour, which will produce a nutty, slightly acidic loaf absolutely packed with nutrients. The flavour of the flour also matches well with fruits, making it a wonderful flour to use in fruit breads and sweet pastries.

As one of the first crops to ever be cultivated, emmer is a very important grain that’s only now just starting to be rediscovered. Originally from the Middle East, it’s part of the wheat family and sometimes referred to as farro – an Italian term that covers spelt, emmer and einkorn. While it is relatively rare to come across emmer in Europe, it’s remained popular in Italy, where it is sold as whole wheat berries, to be boiled boiled until soft and chewy for use in soups and stews. It also managed to sustain its status as an important crop in countries such as Morocco and Ethiopia, as it grows well in poor-quality soils.

When it comes to bread-making, emmer is much harder to turn into flour compared to regular wheat as it has a tough, thick husk surrounding the grains. This is why it was replaced by more modern varieties over the centuries, but in recent years it has been reintroduced to the UK, grown in small quantities for bakers looking to create loaves that are steeped in history and offer something different to the standard loaf. It acts in a similar way to Italian durum wheat, meaning it’s a popular choice for pasta-making too, and the deep, earthy, slightly sweet flavour combined with the reddish-brown colour it turns when baked makes emmer flour very interesting to work with.

Einkorn predates all other ancient grains and can be traced way back to 7500 BC (emmer is a hybrid of einkorn mixed with wild grass). This makes it the ‘original’ wheat variety, from which all other wheat species originate. It’s thought that it was first domesticated in Turkey, but humans were collecting the seeds dropped by wild einkorn plants tens of thousands of years beforehand. Einkorn crops spread throughout Europe up until around 2000 BC, when it began to be replaced by emmer, but small pockets of it remained in northern Europe. In more recent times, it became associated with the Provençal cuisine of France, where the local variety is known as petit épeautre and has PGI protection from the EU. While it’s usually boiled as a whole grain in France to be added to salads and soups, it is also turned into flour for bread-making, pasta production and even beer.

Making bread using einkorn flour can be a bit of a challenge – the dough is very sticky and if too much water is added it will become unusable. Get it right, however, and you’re rewarded with an incredible loaf that boasts a dark craggy crust and light, moist interior.

This large wheat variety is thought to have been what the Ancient Egyptians made their bread with, and most likely originates from the Middle East (along with einkorn and emmer). It’s believed that it has always been quite a specialist crop to grow, never achieving the popularity of other ancient grains which would go on to be crossbred into modern bread wheat. However, this is what makes it such an interesting ingredient – the grains are particularly large, it grows especially well in dry, arid conditions and has a distinctly buttery flavour when used in baking. More recently, pasta producers have been using it as it is similar to Italy's durum wheat.

Khorasan was all but unheard of until the 1960s, when two farmers in Montana spotted the grains at a country fair and decided to see if it would grow in the local northwesterly climate. It did, and they decided to trademark their crop as Kamut, to stop other companies from creating modified or crossbred versions of the grain and selling it under the same name. Nowadays, practically all the khorasan wheat available in the world falls under the Kamut name, and while it still only accounts for a tiny percentage of wheat crops globally, it’s growing in popularity year after year. Breads made with khorasan have a subtle yellow colour, with a buttery, nutty flavour and even, slightly denser texture when compared to loaves made with regular wheat.