'Heritage grains' return as tasty alternatives, and the trend is sprouting here
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Fresh bread made with Frederick Soft White Winter Wheat grown at Weatherbury Farm in Washington County. -
Nigel Tudor holds Aroostook Rye wheat (left) and Mixine, a hard Red Winter wheat) grown at his family's Weatherbury Farm in Independence Twp., Washington County. -
Nigel Tudor in a field of Red Fife wheat at his family's Weatherbury Farm in Independence Twp., Washington County. -
Nigel Tudor checks the Einkorn wheat growing at his family's Weatherbury Farm in Independence Twp., Washington County. -
Austrian Landrace variety of Einkorn wheat. -
Frederick, a Soft White Winter Wheat. -
Aroostook Rye wheat. -
"Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours" by Kim Boyce with Amy Scattergood. -
Elizabeth Dyck, right, in the kitchen of I Trulli in New York City with chef Patti Jackson. -
Elizabeth Dyck, coordinator of the Northeast Organic Wheat Project, talks to participants in a NOFA-NY (Northeast Organic Farming Association) field day last summer in Newfield N.Y.
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"Profoundly herbaceous. Nutty fresh. Deep toasty caramel notes."
Would you guess this is the vocabulary of a professional grain taster, sitting down every day -- as does Glenn Roberts, founder of Anson Mills, specialty producers -- to somewhere between six and 30 spoonsful of plain boiled heritage grains? The variety described is Red Fife, America's preferred bread flour in the 19th century, now being revived.
Identifying flavor, aroma and "finish" not in wine but in wheat may be a new thought, since local heritage grain has just stepped on stage in Western Pennsylvania. Most of us haven't tasted much of it.
We are about to have a chance to relearn what the collective American palate once knew about our grain heritage when grain was chosen for flavor, grown close to home and ground fresh.
"It's taken for granted in Europe that grain has terroir, reflects the soil and climate in which it grows," says Mr. Roberts. "People have grain mills on their countertops. They search the countryside for farmers with the best-tasting grains."
Anson Mills in Columbia, S.C. (ansonmills.com) is fabled among chefs and food enthusiasts who revel in the tastes and textures of its Southern "antebellum" grains, brought by Mr. Roberts from the verge of extinction. He discovered some of the plants that were the source of the once-beloved Dixie flours and corn meals unrecognized by landowners, in abandoned fields and back gardens.
• All-local, all-organic Clarion River Organics, Sligo: Find it at farm markets, in CSA boxes and at Pittsburgh Public Market in the Strip District. Nathan Holmes, co-founder of the four-year old consortium, works with mostly Amish organic farmers.
Selling grain began with spelt grown by Amish grower Aaron Schwartz. Cued by Nigel Tudor, Mr. Schwartz connected with Amish all-organic miller Monroe Stutzman in Ohio. Mr. Schwartz's spelt, a cover crop, when ground into flour, became a cash crop. Mr. Holmes now sells thousands of pounds of the consortium's whole-wheat flour and whole-grain spelt flour and spelt crackers, graham flour and graham crackers. Western Pennsylvania grain is seasonal: Clarion has no more whole-wheat flour until the red winter wheat is harvested this fall, but rolled oats, spelt and whole-wheat bread are sold at the Pittsburgh Public Market and farm markets (clarionriverorganics.com).
• Some-local, all-organic Frankferd Farms: Order online or buy at the Saxonburg store and other outlets. This $5-million, certified-organic farm and flour mill has been in the grain business for 30 years. Frankferd grows a portion of the many grains it sells. Owner T. Lyle Ferderber says, "Western Pennsylvania is behind the New England curve of heritage grain, but it's coming. Somebody, like Nigel, has to stick his neck out. We need awareness, more processors, and then we need a bakery." Get a feel for prices in the catalog at frankferd.com.
• Food markets: You will find exotic grain selections, some organic, at Whole Foods Market, East End Co-Op and Giant Eagle Market District. The Settlers Ridge Market District has done its homework with "all natural" whole-wheat, graham, spelt, amaranth, flax, buckwheat, millet, kamut, rye, corn, barley and much more from Bob's Mill, Milwaukie, Ore. (bobsredmill.com).
The new grain specialists are also inspired by the "ancient" hard-hulled varieties, such as spelt, emmer and einkorn, staffs of life cited in the Bible.
If this sounds like a precious effort for a boutique market, consider the role grain plays in what we grow and what we eat.
For Chef Dan Barber, the James Beard Foundation's top chef in America in 2009 (and who says he feels like his head is in a wheat field right now because he is writing a book about this nation's relationship to its food), "It all comes down to grain.
"Eighty percent of agricultural production is devoted to raising grain to feed us or animals. We'll never achieve sustainability if we limit our focus to the produce and proteins. They represent a tiny fraction of the farming landscape."
The executive chef of the renowned restaurants Blue Hill in Manhattan and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., loads so many local grains into his menus he is hard pressed to remember if it was New York State emmer bread or a farro dish that recently tickled the palates of President Obama and his family.
Any way you look at it, a local food supply lacking its staples has a big hole in it.
Modest resurgences of organic heritage grain are being fueled by pioneers across the country -- Vermont, New York, Washington state, the Carolinas.
We can now add an outpost of our own.
Weatherbury Farm near Avella, Washingon County, was named for Thomas Hardy's "Far From the Madding Crowd." These idyllic acres might feel like a lonely spot on the globe to organic farmer Nigel Tudor -- if the energetic 30-year-old had time for introspection.
First Published August 11, 2011 12:00 am
