Nicole Jolly from True Food TV beat me to the punch with this “Battle of the Ancient Grains.” I wanted to do this same thing, I baked mine once a week over a month’s time and could not compare them as well as she has.
Below is her battle video followed by my transcript of her presentation, which by the way is the perfect way to finish up #NationalFlourMonth and our ancient grain series.
Transcript for Nicole Jolly‘s Battle of the Ancient Grains Spelt vs Einkorn vs Emmer vs Kamut Wheat
When you go get ice cream, you order vanilla every time, right? No, not when there’s salted caramel butter, pecan, and chocolate chunk. So why are you baking bread with only white?
Hello, lovely people. Nicole,
This video is part of a deep dive series I’m doing on sourdough. And I just want to say thank you to all you guys for showing up in the comments on the last few videos. If you’re just getting the memo and you’re looking to up your baking game, then go watch those videos right after this one, there are links below today.
Today we’re exploring ancient wheat. We’re going to discover what exactly we’ve been missing out on and why this is a hands-on side-by-side comparison of the foremost readily available ancient wheat types here in the US: Spelt, Einkorn, Emmer, and Khorasan (Kamut®).
Each of these has its own unique flavor, texture, and baking qualities. I’m going to put them head to head to see which one reigns supreme. Now, if you just want the instant gratification of knowing which one performs best without an understanding of any of their mindblowing benefits, then skip to here (8:35)in the video.
But first let’s just define what ancient wheat is. First of all, wheat is ancient, period. We can trace the crop to the very birth of agriculture at least 7,000 years ago. But modern wheat is very different from what we used to eat. The flour that you buy in the grocery store today comes from varieties that were bred for production qualities like super high yields and high performance gluten. Notice that I didn’t say flavor.
These ancient varieties on the other hand have remained largely unchanged. At least for the last several hundred years. They fell out of favor because they weren’t compatible with our modern industrial food system. For one thing, their gluten structure is much more delicate. You can not use these grains in big industrial mixers that pump out massive amounts of bread quickly.
At the farm level, they’re expensive to process because they all have tough hulls on their outer layer. It is sort of like a corn husk. You need a special piece of equipment to remove the hulls on these grains. Whereas the hulls of modern wheat are barely there. You can easily remove them with a little jostling in the combine. So as farmers stopped growing these other kinds of wheat, we forgot that wheat wasn’t supposed to taste like one bland homogenous thing.
Luckily though, there’s been a revival in artisan bread baking, and there are farmers dedicating themselves to reviving these heritage grains. And as it turns out, these ancient grains are really compatible with organic growing. They can out muscle weeds. They can grow in poor soil without needing to be pumped up with fertilizers. They don’t yield as much wheat pound for pound as modern wheat, but that’s not what we’re going for here. We’re going for all the goodness, these ancient wheat strains bring.
Amazing flavor and more nutrition. They have significantly higher protein than modern wheat. And they’re rich sources of many vitamins and minerals that our bodies need. They’re also believed to be more digestible than modern wheat.
I say believed because many of the studies that claim ancient grains are more digestible are generally speaking funded by whole grain advocates. Well, counter research, trying to debunk those claims, is again, generally speaking, funded by “big wheat.” Funny that.
So let’s take a closer look at them.
Einkorn is thought to be the oldest of all ancient wheat. Einkorn means one kernel in German and refers to the single florette in a spikelet of Einkorn grass. Modern wheat grows, three to five kernels per spikelet.
Einkorn is also the tiniest of the ancient kinds of wheat. It is rich and carotenoids, which gives us ground flour of vaguely golden tinge.
Emmer kernels are slightly larger than Einkorn, and they’re known for their robust flavor. In ancient times, Emmer rose to dominate Einkorn because it was easier to grow.
Emmer could better tolerate heat, and it was less likely to drop its seed before harvest. It yields a soft flour that has an almost reddish hue.
Spelt is a big plump wheat variety that joins soy and quinoa as a complete protein. Meaning it has all nine essential amino acids that our bodies need. This is a rare thing in the plant world.
I find that generally, spelt flour behaves a lot like modern wheat when you’re making bread, which makes sense since it’s the most closely related to common bread wheat than the rest of these ancient varieties.
Kamut® is the American commercial name for Khorasan wheat. Khorasan is a Northeastern province of Iran where this wheat is native. It is an ancestor of durum wheat, the leading wheat grown for pasta, which yields a golden flour. Kamut’s thin elegant kernels also yield a soft golden flour.
So the advantage of having my KoMo counter-top grain mill is that I can mill my grain minutes before making my bread. So there’s zero loss of flavor, fragrance, or nutrition, all of which degrades over time as flour sits at room temperature.
Full disclosure, I got my KoMo from Pleasant Hill Grain, who I’m partnering with on this sourdough video series. I’ll put a link here: https://pleasanthillgrain.com/komo-classic-grain-mill-flour-grinder-wood-stone so you can check this mill out yourself.
Now for the side-by-side comparison of how each of these four ancient kinds of wheat performed in a sourdough loaf.
I used the same base ingredients for each loaf. My sourdough starter, water, salt, and flour. Each loaf was made with 60%, whole ancient grain and 40% organic white bread flour.
In a 60/40 loaf, the flavor of the ancient grain comes through loud and clear. But the modern wheat helps strengthen the gluten structure so that we still end up with a nice buoyant crumb.
And here are my key takeaways:
- First, off I learned that not all wheat should be milled the same way. I milled everything at the third from finest setting, the Einkorn and Kamut came out buttery soft. The Emer felt a little sandy and there were pretty big pieces of bran left in the spelt.
- The Einkorn and Emmer were stickier doughs to work with. But at this hydration around 77%, it wasn’t that difficult to manage them. If you don’t know what hydration is or how it can improve your bread, I’ll drop a link here: https://yoursourdoughstart.com/?p=9296
Now the Kamut was the thirstiest dope. I added an extra 50 grams of water, and in hindsight, I could have pushed it 50 more without the dough becoming too sloppy. It built up great strength. Overall, I’d say Kamut was a dream to work with. - The spelt dough was surprisingly sticky during the slap and fold and took longer than expected to come together. But the dough built up some good strength as you can see, and it was easy to shape too.
- After cold proofing all the dough overnight in the fridge, I could see the Emer and Einkorn doughs weren’t as elastic. They had more slack due to their lower gluten.
- On the other hand, I began to worry that I had slightly under-proofed the Kamut and spelt. They were just a little less springy to the touch than I like.
All four loaves of bread baked up rather beautifully. The Einkorn rose surprisingly well, even as it spread out. While the Emmer showed the weakest gluten strength, but stay tuned. The crumb of both loaves was a very pleasant surprise.
The Kamut and spelt had the most vertical rise as I’d anticipated from working with the doughs. And they formed beautiful crisp ears.
I should also mention that the golden color of the Kamut bread is really beautiful. And the Emmer too had a bit of the pretty reddish hue that you can see and it’s raw kernel.
Now, when I opened the Einkorn, I was really happy with how fluffy the crumb was. I expected a much denser crumb from a wheat with low gluten.
The Emmer was also a nice surprise. I was expecting the densest crumb here, but it too had some nice holes going on inside. The Emmer may have lost the strength test here, but it won for strength of flavor and aroma. If you want a really robust taste and fragrance then Emmer is your grain.
Now, the spelt came out a lot denser than I expected, but I suspect that was a proofing issue. Next time I’ll lengthen the proof at room temperature before refrigerating. The flavor and aroma of the spelt were the mildest of all four loaves.
I may have also under-proofed the Kamut. I think you can get a more open crumb with a longer proof time and more water. Yet, even with its small holes, this was not a dense bread. The interior was light and tender.
In terms of overall performance, the Kamut wins my battle of the ancient grains for its gluten strength for being easy to work. For with for its beautiful golden crisp crust and really lovely flavor, which is maybe even a little sweeter than the rest. I also can’t get over the color of this loaf. Does this even look like a 60%, whole wheat loaf?
I promise after you experienced loaves like these baking with 100% store-bought white flour will just seem like going back to vanilla ice cream every time, even when I’m making a white loaf, I still add at least 25%, whole grain ancient wheat because the flavor and aroma just can’t be beaten.
And once you dive into milling your own grain, you’re going to feel like a painter mixing colors. Combining these ancient kinds of wheat creates even more amazing flavor combos. You will be baking in Technicolor.
If you would like to try baking sourdough with these grains, here are a few of our recipes:
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