April 28, 2020 - 7:58am
Where can I buy French grown lower protein grain, in France if necessary.
Ok. So I’m based in Ireland and I’m milling and baking bread daily using Irish (0 miles!) and English wheat berries. It’s all good. I’m getting into sourdough now and I want to buy some French lower protein wheat berries. The problem is I cannot find any for sale anywhere.
Does anyone know a vendor? If I have to I’ll go to Brittany or Normandy to get them (post lockdown). It’s frustrating. I can buy wheat berries from the UK and have them delivered ridiculously cheaply so why can’t I find a seller in France who will do the same? I’d buy 50kgs. I’d buy German or Italian wheat berries too if I could find them. All advice appreciated.
Thank you,
May
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If you just want something with less/softer gluten, there are lots of heirloom wheat varieties in the British Isles that will have different properties (lower/different kind of gluten content) than modern spring/winter hard wheat. If you can't find a supplier of a native landrace heirloom wheat, you can almost certainly pick up some locally grown spelt. I usually substitute spelt for anything that calls for whole wheat pastry flour because I can't be bothered to keep yet another kind of wheat on hand. Spelt makes wonderful, light, fluffy cake, and excellent pastry. I just made a vanilla genoise layer cake with raspberry buttercream frosting using 100% freshly-milled spelt, and it came out lovely. (Sorry I don't have a crumb shot! We ate it all up too quickly!)
Wow. Nice cake! I never thought of spelt but I will try it, as you suggest. I wanted the French wheat berries to satisfy my curiosity really. Does using French wheat make a difference when baking French bread? Is ciabatta made with Italian flour better? I’m definitely going to buy wheat berries from all over Europe once lockdown is over and flights resume. I’ll get some from the America’s as well and do comparison tests. What do we live for, eh, if not to play? Thanks for suggestions.
May
Due to the lockdown I’ve given up my search for French wheat berries(for now). I’ll have to go there when world reopens and I’ll find them then (a few bags will bounce about nicely with cheese and bottles of wine in the boot of my car!). (I bought about 40 bottles of wine in a local netto supermarket near the Roscoff ferry terminal last time I was in France. It was all super cheap (averaged about €3.50 per bottle). I figured I’d buy the wine the locals bought so that’s what I did.My expectations were low. God, it was good. Really good. So I’ll definitely make that trip again!).
Ill say this: I’ve milled English and Irish wheat berries and used both in identical recipes. The results are astonishingly different. The look feel and taste of the bread is totally different. The volume is a lot lower with the Irish wheat. The crust thicker, less nutty. The differences are huge and are entirely down to the wheat berries themselves. In fact you wouldn’t even know I’d used the same recipe and methods they are so different in taste.
So imho playing with wheat from one country and trying to make it more like wheat from another will never work. So I’ve bought 25kgs of T55 flour (Moulin Soufflet brand) from France (bought online from Irish distributor Kellswholemeal.ie - €30.50 for 25kg inc delivery) and I’ll see how it is different from the English and Irish. It should arrive within a few days I’ll then decide if going that step further and buying the French berries is worth the effort. Apparently milling methods in France are different - who knew? Maybe I won’t be able to produce t55/t65 flour at home (my eventual goal).
Has anyone experimented with different wheat species and wheat from different countries to see how different the results are? I’d like to read such a thread.
May