[Sca-cooks] Chickpea and Barley Flour

[S CLEMENGER]

I'm guilty, 100%, of making whole-grain mustard, but it's purely because I prefer it that way.  It's also less work.
I'm interested, though, in trying frumenty with some different types of wheat.  This part of Artemisia is largely hard winter wheat country, but there are all kinds of wheat berries available at my local "granola" store (Good Food Store...local equivalent of Whole Foods).  Of the common wheats available today, which is closest to that found, say, in 14th century Northern Europe?
--Maire
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius<mailto:adamantius1 at verizon.net> 
  To: Cooks within the SCA<mailto:sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org> 
  Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 11:08 AM
  Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Chickpea and Barley Flour



  On Jan 28, 2008, at 12:57 PM, jenne at fiedlerfamily.net<mailto:jenne at fiedlerfamily.net> wrote:

  > We tend to think of medieval flours as more coarsely ground than our
  > modern ones, but sometimes we overstate. (Like the people who want  
  > to use
  > 'cracked' mustard in their mustard recipes, instead of grinding it.)

  It's also fairly common for people to forget that a lot of Europeans  
  were using a softer wheat than 21st-century Americans are accustomed to.

  Then there's the fallacy of assuming labor done by hand rather than  
  machine is not as good, but we should remember that the standard that  
  the machine is supposed to be imitating is set by hand, more or less,  
  and not the other way around.

  And these people _did_ have bolting cloth, after all.