Ancient grains; emmer, einkorn and spelt

You'll be interested to know the earliest wheat species are diploid genetic arrangement, the later species are tetraploids, and the historical latest are hexaploid through mixing up species. Generally, they're higher in protein but lower in glutens, higher in minerals, more flavorful, but worse for bread. They don't rise very well. But they make great crackers and flatbread.

Here is a very long video with more than you'll care to know and with an incredibly annoying overdub of "muted" and "unmuted" throughout. Apparently shutting down the last speaker and queuing up the next. If you can stick with it, and if you have the slightest interest, then it's worth a listen. They have very good information, interesting too, but I suspect most people won't care, and they go very slowly.

I bought emmer and einkorn one time but I didn't know what I was getting. I didn't know what to expect, I didn't know what I was doing so I wasn't impressed.

This man does an experiment using both for sourdough bread. He too is incredibly slow, and he measures everything to the gram. He's more science than intuitive or artistic, and he goes through each step in slow motion. I was all skip, skip, skippity-skip skip through the whole thing. And he uses something called Celsius, some kind of crazy heat-measuring system where water boils at 100° and water freezes at 0°. Pffft. How bizarre is that? Everyone knows water boils at 212° and freezes at 0°. It's logical. GAWL! He's like some kind of fer'ner or something. So his logic is obviously suspect.

Finally! Something interesting. Kids pretending to be Egyptians making bread. They're coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs but they're fun to watch having fun, as kids do, and they get the job done. I think. They edit the end so we don't see the result. The critical point and they just drop it. Kids. They're adorable. The white kid looks like a ghoul. They put eye makeup on their eyelids.

The thing is, my brother and his wife called yesterday to tell me Alona received the Ukraine cookbook that I sent her. She reviewed scanning the book, what she saw in it and what she intends to do. Then my brother took over and discussed his new Keto diet. 

He has a pattern of latching onto new ideas and going full bore with extreme enthusiasm into philosophy, religion, money management and diet. His enthusiasm is always for a personality behind the economic scheme. He's easily influenced by bullshit artists if their spiel matches his interest, and this new guy fits the pattern, successful in business otherwise, hooked onto the idea decades ago, gave up the old thing for his new consuming interest, wrote a book, holds seminars, discusses his own past excessively and his brilliant epiphany that he's indulging full force, his self-taught program that brought success for him that he wants to share from his empathy for travails of humanity, his decades of research, so that coming into the fad late he puts himself at the beginning, and contriving an entire line of available products from pill capsules to fully arranged diet programs, even prepared food and prepared meals. All of which a person can do themselves without an intervening personality profiting by their organizing this fad information. This must be the fourth or fifth such person my brother has described to me and they all fit the same pattern. Precisely. He wants me to be enthusiastic as he is. He wants my approval of his approval.

He told me that he and his wife spent over a month in Ukraine where they both overate the type things they avoid in America, sweets, things made with grain, everyday, in overabundance. And they both lost weight.

He didn't mention they both probably did a lot more walking around. 

They both felt better. Their cases of heartburn, disrupted digestive system, gas, unhealthy poo, burping, stomach aches, pains, all evaporated. 

Back to the U.S. and all those troubles returned immediatley. His wife is especially susceptible to all American wheat products. Not exactly celiac disease, not diabetes, just a good deal of trouble digesting American wheat. Both of them blame GMOs. 

We see in the videos that humans have been modifying wheat grain genetics since the beginning of time. We have the genetic proof of what humans have done. Lineages are traced by region. Movements of people and movements of wheat seeds are actually being tracked by genetic modifications. But now that Americans have applied actual gene splicing to evoke the best results in productivity and resistance to disease, if not in actual flavor, suddenly genetic modification is Frankenfood. Suddenly genetic manipulation is hazard. Suddenly genetic manipulation causes all kinds of body malfunctions. 

And they know what they know so shut up. 

That does it. They're moving from America because of its food. 

All food is better elsewhere.

You can buy unmodified grains food if like. Mill it yourself if you store it so long the bugs grow in it. But it's going to cost you. That's the real cost of archaic grain. The strains are less productive and they're more difficult to mill and its production occurs on small scale so you pay for all that. 

On Amazon, the lowest reviews for emmer flour and einkorn flour complain about bugs and having to throw it away. 

People buy it because they like to put the grain whole into soup and salads. They generally do not bake with it. I didn't see anyone split the grain with modern high-protein flour to compensate for ancient grain low rise. Seems that would defeat the whole point of using ancient strains. 

If you don't make very much baked products maybe the cost is worth a try.

Amazon:

emmer farro]

[einkorn]

[spelt]