5 thoughts on “Huffman Wheat in the news

  1. Ok, so what types of wheat make the best breads? Probably a dumb question, since there are so many kinds and styles of bread. I’ve been hearing of hard white, hard red, soft this and soft that forever on the local price reports and so on, but they never talk about what types of wheat are used for what.

    My wife has been getting different varieties of wheat from a farm near Colfax and elsewhere and making her own flour and bread out of it, but it’s still a lot of experimenting. She “won the fair” this year in Whitman County for her breads, being designated “Wheat Queen” or some such nonsense, but we really don’t know what we’re doing.

    • For bread you want high protein content, so hard red is the best.
      For pasta you want lower protein content, so soft white is normally used.
      The hard wheat seems to be preferred for storage, but that is just my impression, not a scientific fact; properly protected either should outlast you.
      Personally, in my oatmeal sourdough bread, I also add some ground quinoa and lentils (from a well-know Idaho farm) as well…. Hmm… would quinoa grow well on the farm, Joe? Seems like it should, and it is outstanding nutritionally, though pricy.

      • Quinoa is not a good match because it usually requires harvesting by hand instead of machine (this is almost for certain the reason for the high price). Also it does best in a sandy low-nutrient soil. That isn’t what we have on our farm.

    • Just do a search for the various wheat types and you find that they differ in protein and gluten content. This yields different textures (among other things) in the end products.

      I just did a quick search and found, “soft wheat flour most suitable for baked goods made from batters, such as cakes and biscuits, and not as suitable for baked goods made from dough, such as breads and rolls.”

      Of potential interest is that one of the standardized tests nephew Brad would do is bake cookies and measure the diameter (among other things) of the cookies. See for example here and here.

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