SC - Hard versus soft wheat berries for frumenty?

[Decker, Terry D.]

> But back to topic. Generally, I think the parts of Europe where we find
> extant period furmenty recipes is pretty consistent with growing the
> softer strains of wheat. It seems pretty widely agreed, AFAIK, that the
> places where such foods as higher-gluten bread flours, as well as
> semi-automated mills, proliferated in period, were the places where
> harder wheats were grown.
> 
> One _might_ argue that the very fact that this wheat is being used to
> make frumenty argues that it is unsuitable for bread. Of course, that
> argument backfires if we wonder whether it is not being milled into
> flour because of its hardness. But what the hey.
>    
> Adamantius
> 
Bread requires a finer meal than frumenty.  It also takes more time.  And it
requires an oven of some type.

If the mill could not turn out a fine enough flour, then frumenty makes
sense.  It also makes sense to use the fine meal from a bolting for bread
and the coarse meal for frumenty.  Harder wheat turns out more fine meal
suitable for bread, so I have no doubt bread was more common in the areas
which raised harder wheats.

Since grain is easy to cook and porridges and gruels seem to be common in
period, the fact that there are recipes for cooked wheat would suggest that
these are dishes less commonly prepared.

Having done my bit for devilish advocacy.

Bear