[Sca-cooks] samidh flour, 00 farina di grano duro

Christiane christianetrue at earthlink.net
Tue Mar 22 15:27:34 PDT 2011


There's been a lot of speculation on this, but I am wondering if samidh flour was a superfine grind of durum wheat (and I am wondering if it was even possible to get this superfine grind with period technology). 

The 00 farina di grano duro was used in Sicily to make things such as cakes, at least according to Mary Taylor Simeti in "Pomp and Sustenance." I was very surprised to see this, I thought it only good for bread and pasta. Sicily and Southern Italy, of course, owe its durum wheat heritage to the Arabs who brought it there. 

The durum semolina flour available in the U.S. is pretty much the coarse grind, and even the finest grind available to us here doesn't rival the fineness of the 00 grind, which has an extremely silky texture. I understand you can mail-order it, though. The Indian stores carry a fine-grind durum flour for chappatis (Golden Temple is a brand I am thinking of), but it seems to have bran ground into it.

YIS,
Adelisa


More information about the Sca-cooks mailing list