Identity-Preserved Wheat for Daisy Bread Flour
Eating only "local" food isn't always practical and so, for many of us, the new distinction is "accountable". We know the farmer, the field and have some experience with the quality of the product over time.
Because Daisy flours are 100% organic we maintain long and accountable relationships with the farmers that grow the grains we buy. We know the "identity" profiles of those farmers.
Now we - and several of our farmers - are learning more and more about identity-preserved wheat and offering named varieties - Buckskin, Clark's Cream, Morgan, for example - of wheat milled for our customers.
At Daisy Flour - for 200 or more years - we've been milling versatile Daisy pastry flour from the soft spring wheat that grows in the northeastern United States. We've been growing heritage soft wheats locally, but that's another story - our Heritage Wheat Project - that we'll bring you nearer to harvest time in July.
This year, we are milling bread flour bread flour identity-preserved wheats and asking our customers to grade them for taste, aroma, crust, and other qualities.
It's the food chemistry of hard winter wheat that creates a well-risen, soft crusted, slow to stale, loaf of bread. And that kind of wheat grows in the dry, comparatively arid and colder Plains states. So far, we have milled (and have available) red Buckskin, white Clark's Cream, and will soon be releasing flour made from another hard, red winter wheat called Morgan.
Our friends in the Northeast Wheat Project are working hard to grow hard wheats in the Champlain Valley of New York. Among them is the famous wheat variety called Red Fife, which is widely beloved in Canada. We hope to be able to buy domestic hard wheats in the near future. Stay tuned throughout the coming harvest season for updates. If you want to experiment now, try the red or white hard identity-preserved wheats we have milled into Daisy Bread Flour early in the year 2010.
References:
Wheat Partners in the Northeast U.S. http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2010/03/the-breadbasket-of-america-new-england/37830/
Clarks Cream http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJhIcxERhmM
NOFA http://www.nofa.org/index.php |
