Today's Discovery -- Purple Wheat

      Ten thousand years of cultivating wheat has resulted in thousands of varieties -- dwarf, resistant to pests and diseases, able to grow in short seasons, and bountiful in the amount produced per acre. In the process of re-discovering heritage seeds and finding the origins of today's wheats, the ancestors have found a new following. Spelt, emmer and einkorn all can be found on menus of exotic restaurants and in the seed bins of specialty companies. 


     Purple wheat is one of the newest for sale, marketed as originally out of Africa -- Ethiopia or East Africa, depending on who you ask. It's so new that it's riding the wave of trademarking almost everything, and most of what's available on the Internet comes with its own brand name. The selling points are its unusual color, its high doses of anti-oxidants, and its taste -- robust, nutty, and sweet, according to various sources.


     How would you use it? One company (http://www.strobl-naturmuehle.com/english/organic/purpur.htm) suggests everything from baguettes to breakfast cereals to biscuits. But you'd want to be pretty sure of your audience before putting a purple biscuit under the sausage gravy, or the strawberry shortcake. Another company is happy to sell you a 20-kg bag of PurpleBerry Wholegrain Flour™ (purple wheat flour combined with purple corn flour) and let you figure out for yourself how to use it (http://www.spectrum-ingredients.com.sg/ourproducts_baking_grains.html). A third company, Infraready Products, http://www.infrareadyproducts.com/products/cereal-grains.html sells purple wheat as "AnthoGrain™" 


     Growing the wheat yourself is an option too. Prairie Garden Seed in Saskatchewan, Canada will sell you Utrecht Blue, which is useful in their eyes for weaving wheat into decorative displays, as well as growing for food (http://www.prseeds.ca/catalogue/grain.php?C=Grain). 


    If you just want to try it out, (http://www.theswissbakery.com/store/p/464-Purple-Wheat.html) order it on-line from the Swiss Bakery, or  buy from the Austrian-run GrainHarvest BreadHouse in Waterloo and Kitchener, Ontario http://www.grainharvest.ca/store/grainharvest.