[Sca-cooks] What Samidh Flour Isn't

Terry Decker t.d.decker at att.net
Sun Sep 1 10:49:47 PDT 2013


Looking at the etymology of "samid(h)" from the Aramaic for barley bread, 
the current meaning appears to be "fine wheat flour."

Wright translates the word as "semolina" in The Mediterranean Feast, but 
since semolina proper is the coarse middlings from the milling process, I 
believe both he and Nasrallah are using semolina to mean durum flour.

Nasrallah states, "According to medieval sources, samıd in the eastern 
region of the Islamic world is a particular kind of fine flour, bran free, 
high in starch content, and low in gluten."  If this is true, then we are 
considering a finely milled wheat flour, probably thrice bolted.  High 
starch, low gluten suggests either a hulled wheat or a soft variety of T. 
aestivium (common wheat).  The cultivated hulled wheats are einkorn, emmer, 
spelt and durum.  By the time of al-Bagdahdi, einkorn was no longer in 
general cultivation, emmer was in general use but was losing ground to 
common wheat, spelt usually produces too coarse a flour to be considered 
"fine," durum was cultivated, but is more closely associated with North 
Africa, it is higher in gluten than the other hulled wheats.  From the facts 
I currently have available, I would expect "samidh" to be either emmer flour 
or a fine whole wheat pastry flour, with durum coming into greater use 
toward the end of the Medieval period.

Just a thought.  The precise definition of "samid" may vary by region.  The 
assumption that the recipes in al-Bagdadhi are Persian recipes may be in 
error.  Some of them may be recipes collected elsewhere and included in the 
collection, thus producing the definition discrepencies noted in the crique 
and response.

Bear

>> Sweet Delights from a Thousand and One Nights: The Story of Traditional 
>> Arab Sweets has arrived.
>
> On page xv, they define samidh as " in medieval recipes, a type of flour."
>
> On page xvii, they write " There are also times when we simply used our 
> tastebuds in cooking. A case in point is samidh,
> an ingredient called for in a number of recipes. Nawal Nasrallah's 
> definition of this type of flour is that it is a finely ground flour, 
> while Charles Perry on the other hand, explains that samidh is coarser 
> than flour. (A Critique' 4, 37). For certain recipes, we tried both flour 
> and extra-fine semolina. The extra-fine worked out well taste-wise and 
> texture-wise. this type of semolina is available in Middle Eastern and 
> Mediteranean markets."
>
> The critique is of course the one from PPC
> https://prospectbooks.co.uk/samples/Baghdad-critique.pdf
>
> Nawal Nasrallah writes there: "About samıd,
> Perry left it untranslated because ‘it might refer to a
> particular kind of wheat.’ It sure does, but you also wonder why Perry
> did not himself try to find out what it is for his readers.
> According to medieval sources, samıd
> in the eastern region of the
> Islamic world is a particular kind of fine flour, bran free, high in 
> starch
> content, and low in gluten."
>
> Charles Perry replied "On samıd I must differ with Nasrallah.
> Samıd referred to a coarser product than flour, as shown by the fact that 
> poppy seed is ground to
> samıd (meal) in several recipes, rather than to flour (†a ̨ın or daqıq),
> just as poppy seed is typically ground to meal today."
>
> Johnnae
>
> On Aug 16, 2013, at 11:09 AM, Johnna  wrote:
>
>> Looks like the brand new book Sweet Delights from a Thousand and One 
>> Nights: The Story of ... By Habeeb Salloum, ‎Muna Salloum, Leila Salloum 
>> Elias ‎ - 2013 - ‎Calls for “samidh flour.”  snipped
>>
>> Johnnae
>>
>> On Aug 15, 2013, at 11:14 AM, David Friedman wrote:
>>
>>> It's worth noting that Nasrallah's standard description of samidh flour 
>>> is "high in starch and bran free."




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