Impure thoughts

Just when I was worried that after last week's ciabatta success this would turn into a simple recipe blog, a baking disaster came along just to stop me getting carried away.

I was trying a new flour, called Khorasan. As well as being the name of a flour, it is also the name of a region of Iran and a Shi-ite Islamist group, so in Googling recipes, I've probably now gotten myself onto a security list at GCHQ,

Golden brown, texture like sun

I say new, but it is actually a very old tetraploid strain of wheat, originating in the cradle of civilization itself, and sometimes known as the Wheat of the Pharoahs, probably mostly by marketers, or less enigmatically as King Tut's Wheat. It gradually fell into disuse as hexaploid wheat variants superseded it, and had no commercial producers until the 1970s when a couple of Montana farmers cultivated a variety that they could trademark. Today all Khorasan wheat is produced under this trademark, Kamut (from the ancient Egyptian meaning wheaten bread), and through their breeding programme they have a monopoly on its use. And they control it strictly: no interbreeding, it must be certified organic, and when used in baking cannot be sold as Khorasan if it is less than 50% of the bread's contents.

8 hour prove - before baking

It's all the things hippy bakers love: low in gluten, higher in selenium, protein, antioxidants and vitamins than ordinary wheat. If you're familiar with other posts on my blog, by now you'll know this should be ringing alarm bells. An ancient in-bred wheat, low in gluten - always a handy thing for a knuckle-powered baker. It has the colour and consistency of fine sand, and in many ways was rather like baking with it too. Sticky, hygroscopic and as flexible as Netanyahu at the negotiating table. About the only thing left in my armoury is time, so I left it on an overnight prove and went for a safe tinned loaf option.

 And the result? Despite generous oiling, a stuck loaf. And the bread I was able to evict had the nutty, golden taste of...sand. As a wise sage once said: "the stone age didn't end because they ran out of stone." And so with wheat: there was a reason we started to cultivate modern wheat varieties.

After baking - surgery required

So what did we learn today? As with the partial success of the rye loaf, the total lack of success here was baking using the pure, specialised, idiosyncratic flours to strive for a unique taste based upon a misplace sense of 'purity'. Purity as a general concept is something I instinctively avoid - purity is barren, narrow, limited. Purity is a dead end - in art, in genetics, in life in general. I should follow my instincts and not follow the cul-de-sac of purity, but look to blend and mix combinations of the fussy Ryes and Khorasans with the reliable bedrock of modern wheat varieties to achieve new tastes, unique and interesting breads. It's the grit that forms the pearl.