[Sca-cooks] Playing with wheat!

[Laura C Minnick]

Galefridus, have you been in touch with Mistress Eulalia out here in An 
Tir? She's the Pie Laurel. I know that she did a lot of experiments with 
different flours/grains for pastry, and she might be very interested in 
what you're doing! For that matter, she might have some info for you!

Liutgard


On 7/18/2017 2:06 PM, Galefridus Peregrinus wrote:
> TL;DR: I’m playing with parboiling, drying, and cracking wheat. While 
> everybody talks a good game about how ancient bulgur is, recipes are 
> scarce.
>
>
>
> Anyway, here’s the latest on my wheat experiments: I’ve been 
> parboiling and drying ancient wheat varieties (emmer, einkorn, and 
> durum) in preparation for making bulgur. I found that as much as I 
> would like to sun-dry the parboiled wheat, this summer's weather has 
> not been the best for such a project. So, I've prepped one batch of 
> wheat by parching (10 hours in an oven at its lowest setting), and 
> another by sun-drying for as long as the day's weather cooperated (7-8 
> hours usually), then parching as above for a couple more hours to get 
> rid of any residual moisture. I also have no idea how the historic 
> cooks defined “parboil.” One food writer says the wheat was boiled for 
> two hours, but that’s cooking nearly to mush. Modern wheat berry 
> recipes recommend cooking for an hour. Just to have some initial 
> number with which to experiment, I’ve been cooking the wheat for 10, 
> 20, and 30 minutes. I’ve figured out that there’s a fair bit of 
> interesting food chemistry going on in this process, but since I’m 
> trying to channel my inner 13th century cook, I’m trying not to think 
> along those lines.
>
>
>
> The next step has been to crack the wheat. I tried using a marble 
> rolling pin and slab, but I found it was hard to control and required 
> too much effort. So instead I've borrowed a friend's rotary quern 
> (thank you, Magnus/Peter!), which makes the process much easier.
>
>
>
> Some observations: Durum wheat is quite hard, but it's also as brittle 
> as glass, especially after boiling and drying. As a result, it's the 
> simplest to grind – the grains shatter easily. I think that emmer 
> wheat might be similar, but I cannot directly compare the two based on 
> my current data, since I cracked the emmer with a marble slab and used 
> the hand quern for the durum; however, emmer seemed to break pretty 
> cleanly. I'll know for sure when I complete the next set of coarse 
> grinds.
>
>
>
> At this point, I need to actually cook some of bulgur that I have 
> prepared. I’m still in the process of researching basic bulgur 
> recipes, and so far have found remarkably few. I find the comparative 
> dearth of bulgur recipes to be surprising, given that a number of 
> sources have stated that the whole parboil, dry, crack, and store for 
> future cooking was very likely the earliest method of preparing wheat. 
> The few recipes I have managed to find involve the inclusion of 
> cracked wheat as a thickener for stews or soups, making a kind of 
> porridge. Recipes in another group call for mixing the cracked wheat 
> with yogurt or a similar dairy product and drying it for storage, with 
> the intention of using it when needed as a thickener. One interesting 
> thing that I have observed is that many (though not all) of the modern 
> bulgur recipes recommend browning the cracked grain in oil, then 
> adding hot water or broth and cooking until the liquid is absorbed – 
> sort of like preparing a risotto. I have not yet found any indication 
> that this method of sautéing then adding hot liquid was used 
> historically. I’ll post again once I’ve had some experience with 
> cooking the grains.
>
>
>
> BTW, I invite those of you who will be at Pennsic this year to stop by 
> my table at the A&S display on Sunday of War Week – I hope to have a 
> lot of this stuff on display, and I’d enjoy talking to folks!
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