Humans have been relying heavily on cereal grains for roughly 12,000 years now. Cereals form approximately 50% of the worldwide nutritional intake for humans, with maize, rice and wheat as the ruling triumvirate. Bread has sustained kingdoms and empires and shortages of it has ended them. After air and water, there may well be nothing more vital to human life than grain.
Since 2008, we have been facing a global food crisis. The recent uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya were all partly incited by rising cost of food. According to some reports, similar uprisings may be taking root in such disparate nations as Saudi Arabia and North Korea, for the same reason. The world's food supply is under artificial pressure; essentially, the wealthy elite are inflicting a repeat of the Irish potato famine on the entire world, and, though this, like the potato famine, may be an entirely factitious crisis, that doesn't help keep people fed.
What sustained many people through the Irish potato famine, the food shortages of the Terror and other famines was adapting to use a different staple food. We are fortunate enough in the modern world to have access to a variety of cereal grains. When, for instance, rice prices are high, we can look to wheat, oats, corn, barley and even wild grasses. Unfortunately, all of these different grains have different characteristics and so, in most cases, one can't simply replace wheat flour in a recipe with rice flour in a recipe and expect to get comparable results, or for it to work at all. In this series of diaries, I'd like to share some of my experience in learning how to use different grains and flours to best advantage.
Leavening
Before we can talk about the various uses of cereal grains, we must talk about leavening. Not all, but certainly a large number of the applications for cereals and flours require some form of leavening to add lightness, palatability and sometimes nutritive value to the finished product, as well as to help it cook. There are three basic types of leavening used most commonly.
Yeast leavening
Yeasts are highly prevalent microscopic fungi that have been used since ancient times as leavening and nutritional additives in breads. Yeast breads rely on the carbon dioxide produced by the metabolic processes of yeasts - most commonly saccharomyces cerevisiae - as they consume sugars. Yeast is arguably the most commonly-used source of leavening in breads and batters, particularly in the west.
Wheat breads made with yeast tend to be lighter than an equivalent bread made with chemical leavening. They also have a distinctive "yeasty" flavor and a highly developed gluten, resulting in a chewy texture and a distinct crust.
Yeast breads generally have to rest for a period before baking, as a major part of the leavening comes from allowing the yeast time to metabolize sugars and reproduce throughout the dough or batter. Typical wheat breads, for instance, are allowed to rise twice, with much of the gas kneaded out after the first rise; the first rise is to allow the yeast to reproduce and the gluten to develop, with the second rise creating much of the final leavening.
Sourdough
Sourdough breads are partially a subset of yeast breads. A sourdough is really a symbiotic culture of yeast and lactobacillus. The leavening comes from the yeast (either s. cerevisiae if the sourdough was started with baker's yeast, or a wild yeast), and the lactobacillus acidifies the starter, providing a more hospitable environment for the yeast.
Sourdoughs are very similar to bread produced with conventional baker's yeast, with a distinctive tangy flavor and often larger air pockets in the bread. The pre-established yeast colony in a sourdough starter also makes sourdough more attractive for use in quick breads or batter breads (such as pancakes) than baker's yeast.
Chemical leavening
Any chemical reaction that produces carbon dioxide and is produced by food-safe reagents can be used to chemically leaven food. The essential principle of chemical leavening is identical to that of yeast leavening, the addition before baking and early in the baking process of carbon dioxide bubbles to the dough. The most common chemical leaveners used are baking soda, which is simply sodium bicarbonate, a weak base that produces carbon dioxide when it reacts with acid, and baking powder, which is baking soda mixed with dry acid salts and an anti-caking agent like corn starch. Baking soda can be used in conjunction with a food acid, like lemon juice, vinegar or cream of tartar to produce leavening, while baking powder includes its own acid that will produce gas when liquid is added to the dough or batter (for fast-acting baking powder), in the over under heat (for slow-acting baking powder), or both, in the case of common double-acting baking powder.
Chemical leaveners tend to have a (by design) very neutral flavor, although using too little acid with baking soda can impart saltiness to food, and the use of vinegar (acetic acid) as a reagent will leave a potentially undesirable flavor similar to cheap salt-and-vinegar potato chips. Food leavened by chemical reaction, on the whole, will not gain as much leavening as yeast-leavened foods, but, on the other hand, chemical leaveners react much more rapidly than yeast and can be much more convenient. Most leavened quick breads and batter breads use chemical leavening.
Steam
The simplest leavening mechanism available is steam. Most baked goods contain a large amount of liquid that will expand and vaporise under heat, and this will contribute some small leavening that will usually disappear as the food is removed from heat. Some foods are deliberately leavened this way, either by producing a rapid expansion of steam by introducing heat very suddenly (as in popovers or choux pastry) or by layering the dough with fat to keep the layers separated, as in phyllo.
Steam leavening can be very simple but applications tend to be limited as it requires the finished product to be baked to a stiff crust, or else it will fall when the heat is removed. In some cases some steam leavening can be applied to a soft bread that will stay when the bread is cooled, which typically involves creating large pockets in the bread, though these are usually considered unleavened; this is how pita and chapati are made.
Cereals and Flours
There are at least twenty different types of cereals and pseudo-cereals grown for food worldwide, but, according to FAO statistics, the big three food grains, corn, wheat and rice, account for nearly 90% of all cereals grown worldwide. In North America, there is also large-scale production of barley, buckwheat, millet, oats, rye, sorghum and triticale; Europe sees similar production. We'll talk about all of these, as well as some lesser-known cereals and pseudo-cereals such as quinoa.
Glutenous Grains, Part 1
We essentially divide the cereals into two categories, those that contain gluten and those that do not. Gluten is a protein composite that gives bread its elasticity and chewy texture, and cereals that do not contain a significant amount of gluten cannot be used as wheat flour replacement without help. On the other hand, around one in every one hundred fifty people has a sensitivity to gluten known as Celiac Disease, so, for those people, as well as for people who may not have access to typical bread flours, it is important to understand how to use those grains as well.
In this diary, I'm going to cover the two most common glutenous grains, wheat and rye, and explain the basics of how to use them. The next installment will deal with barley and triticale, and the final diary dealing with grains will cover oats, corn, rice, and other grains without significant gluten content.
Wheat
Wheat (genus triticum) is a large family of similar cereal grains with a generally high protein (gluten) content. Most people in the west are familiar with wheat in the form of wheat flour, used for common types of breads, pastry doughs, pasta and similar products. It is also used in its whole grain or cracked form for a variety of dishes, such as groats, couscous and bulgur.
The first thing to note is that while not all forms of wheat flour are equal, they are all wheat. Durum, spelt, einkorn and the various winter and spring wheats all contain different amounts of protein and starch, but are all very roughly interchangeable in many cases where fine control of texture isn't required. Using bread flour, for instance, to make a pie crust will give you a very tough crust, but you can most definitely use pastry flour to make bread, though it will not be as good as using a high-gluten flour.
The simplest use for unmilled wheat, whether whole (often called wheat berries), cut or cracked, is as porridge. Wheat in this form can be used in much the same way as rolled or cut oats, as porridge, but wheat is much harder and should soak for eight to twelve hours before cooking begins. It can then be used as hot cereal, or for more complex dishes in the same way one would use oatmeal or cooked rice, with the caveat that cooking time will be longer to get a good texture from the wheat.
Hot Wheat Cereal
(Unless otherwise noted, all recipes can be scaled up simply by increasing the ingredients proportionally)
2 oz. (roughly 1/2 cup) cracked wheat/bulgur/wheat berries
8 oz. (1 cup) water
For whole wheat berries or unprepared cracked wheat, you will want to put the cereal in a bowl and cover it with cold water. Let it stand to soak for 8 to 12 hours. Prepared wheat cereals, like bulgur, do not need to be soaked.
Take the soaked cereal (or dry prepared cereal) and put it in a small pot with 1 cup of water. Bring to a boil, then cover and lower to simmer. Bulgur or cracked wheat should not have to cook more than 12 to 15 minutes, while whole grains and wheat berries may simmer for up to 45 minutes; long cooking cereals may benefit from an additional 4 ounces of water (1/2 cup) per half cup of cereal. When cooked, most of the water should be gone and the cereal should be soft but not mushy and have a texture similar to properly cooked brown rice. Makes 1-2 servings.
The cooked cereal can be eaten as a hot breakfast cereal with butter, sugar and sweet spices, or can be seasoned with salt, pepper and savory spices or mixed with meat or vegetables and served as a side or main dish.
Any dry cereal grain can be cooked in this same manner, though cooking times will vary. Some types of prepared oats will only need to simmer for five minutes, whole quinoa will cook much like prepared wheat in 12 to 15 minutes, cracked corn and white rice will cook in 15 to 20 minutes, and many other whole grains (pearl barley, triticale, rye berries) cook like whole wheat grains, 45 minutes to an hour (and may require soaking beforehand). Hominy (whole preserved corn) is the most extreme case, and must be soaked overnight and cooked for 2 to 3 hours.
More common than whole or cracked wheat is wheat flour. Modern wheat flour is, bar none, the easiest type of flour to make a bread or bread-type product with, largely because it has been hybridized and bred over centuries to produce a good quality flour. It is used as a basis for most modern baked breads, even those notionally made of a different grain, like cornbread or rye bread. I'm going to present two basic bread recipes recipes here, and discuss variants with the appropriate grains.
Basic Lean Bread
(This recipe, which I use some variant of every time I make bread, was adapted from the book Ratio, by the incomparable Michael Ruhlman. I cannot recommend his book highly enough. It informs my cooking daily.)
10 oz. (roughly 2 1/2 cups) wheat flour
6 oz. (3/4 cup) warm water
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp yeast
Dissolve the yeast in 1/2 cup of water and let it develop for 10-15 minutes, until it becomes creamy. Add the flour and salt and work together. Slowly add the remaining water until the dough comes together; don't add too much water. It should be wet but not sticky. If you have a mixer with a bread hook, mix the dough using the bread hook until it is elastic; this will also reduce your kneading time significantly.
Remove the dough to a work surface and knead (this means to press the dough flat with your hands, fold the dough in half over the short axis, rotate a quarter turn, and repeat. This becomes harder than it sounds very quickly as the protein begins to develop, and requires much stronger stretching). Do not flour your hands or work surface as this will introduce extra flour and as the bread develops bits of dough stuck to your fingers and surface will come up. Knead until the dough feels "silky" (usually fifteen to twenty minutes). Cover the dough with plastic wrap or a damp towel and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled in size, approximately one hour.
Preheat your oven to 450 F. If you want a crustier bread, put a metal dish (like a pie pan) into the oven to heat. Uncover the risen dough and knead a second time, for around ten minutes until the silky and elastic texture returns. Form into a ball, and place either on a cutting board or other movable flat surface like a pizza peel dusted with flour or corn meal (if you have a baking stone) or an ungreased cookie sheet (if you don't). You can also form the dough into a loaf and place in a loaf pan if you want a more traditional loaf of soft-crust sandwich or toast bread. Allow the bread to rise a second time in a warm place until doubled in size, about 45 minutes.
When the dough is risen, you can score the top (cut slashes or an X into it) if you want a rustic crust. Move the bread to the oven (either move the cookie sheet or loaf pan, or place the loaf on the baking stone). If you put a pan in the oven, pour a cup of water into the pan just before you close the oven door; this will create a burst of hot steam that will help the crust develop. Let the bread bake at 450 F for ten minutes, then lower the temperature to 375 F and let it bake for another 45-50 minutes.
This recipe makes one small loaf of plain bread. You can use white bread flour, whole wheat flour or all-purpose flour and get good results with it. You can also make a larger loaf or multiple loaves simply by scaling up the recipe (if you have a scale, you'll get best results if you adjust the recipe by weight, not volume).
Basic Quick Bread
(This is also partially adapted from Ratio, as well as from my favorite cornbread recipe.)
8 oz. (2 cup) wheat flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
4 oz. (1/2 cup/1 stick) butter, melted
8 oz. milk
4 oz. whole eggs (2 large chicken eggs)
Preheat oven to 425 F. Mix dry ingredients thoroughly. Add the eggs, melted butter and milk and mix to form a batter. Pour into a 9x9 square pan and bake for 20-30 minutes.
This is a wonderfully versatile quick bread and can form the basis for a number of different things. To start with, the easiest thing to do is to substitute half of the wheat flour for a different grain flour or meal. If you use corn meal, you'll get a basic light cornbread. If you use corn flour instead, you can add a tablespoon of sugar and have corn muffins. Oat flour and a tablespoon of sugar or honey will give you a delicate oat muffin batter.
To make this quick bread into a more complete food, you can add other things, as well. A half-cup of chopped nuts, dried fruit and/or precooked oats will make this into a much sturdier muffin batter. The cornbread above can be made into a southwestern cornbread with the addition of some chopped green chiles and kernel corn.
As long as the basic proportions are observed, other parts can be switched out as well. If you prepare the cornbread above, but replace the milk with buttermilk and half the melted butter with hot bacon drippings, you'll get a heavier, denser and more savory Southern cornbread. You can substitute water for some or all of the milk in most cases and get a good result (though if you have the option you might want to add a small amount of sugar - a teaspoon or so - even if you wouldn't normally, to replace the missing sugars in the milk).
The biggest change you can make to this recipe is to substitute all of the wheat flour for other flours. This will affect the ultimate rising of the product as well as drastically change its character. Using oat flour, for instance, will give you a crumbly, very cakey result with a deceptively light texture. Unlike the yeast bread recipe, this quick bread derives a significant amount of structure from the egg protein, and so can be reasonably prepared entirely without gluten. We'll discuss more ways to use this recipe in other sections.
Rye
Historically, rye (secale cereale) has been the world's second most popular bread cereal after wheat. Rye is a much hardier grass than wheat, able to withstand colder temperatures and thrive in poorer soil, and so has been a staple grain in central and eastern Europe, and in northern climes. Its popularity in the west peaked in the 1960s and has declined sharply since then; my personal hypothesis is that people don't strictly dislike rye, but the ubiquity of caraway in rye breads puts many people who don't like caraway off rye entirely.
Rye is in many ways similar to wheat, with a lower protein (gluten) content and a higher percentage of soluble fiber. It is otherwise nutritionally similar. The biggest difference when using rye is that rye starch liquefies at a lower temperature than wheat starch, and rye has a higher amount of amylase - the enzyme that converts liquid starch to sugars - than wheat. Consequently, unless precautions are taken rye bread will come out gummy and unpalatable. Traditionally, rye breads have been prepared with a sour starter; the acid in the sourdough inhibits the amylase, and the well-developed yeast in the starter provides extra leavening, helping the relatively weak gluten structure to develop and rise.
The simplest way to prepare a rye yeast bread is simply to replace up to half of the normal wheat flour with rye flour. A rye dough prepared this way will not have the same consistency and "smoothness" of a pure wheat dough. You will get a dense, chewy but very tasty and quite acceptable loaf this way.
The Basic Quick Bread recipe above can also be prepared with rye. Fully 100% of the wheat flour can be replaced with rye flour. The result will have the slightly nutty flavor characteristic of rye, and a delicate crumb. Rye flour quick bread makes a delicious base for corn bread, as well.
Vollkornbrot
(This is a recipe adapted from a number of online sources that I experimented with for quite some time. It is a variant of a traditional German whole grain rye bread and uses no wheat flour. The long, slow baking and long resting time contributes to its dark brown color and rich flavor. Traditionally, this type of rye bread is made with sourdough but this version, using baker's yeast, I've found to be quite acceptable and tasty.)
Starter:
1/4 tsp. baking yeast
4 oz (1/2 cup) warm water
4 oz (scant cup) dark rye flour
Soaked grains or chops:
8 oz (~1 2/3 cups) whole rye berries, rye chops, or other whole grains
8 oz (1 cup) water
Bread:
16 oz (4 scant cups) light rye flour (dark rye can be used but the finished texture will not be as good)
4 oz (1/2 cup) water
2 tsp salt
Prepare the starter and the soaked grains a day in advance. In one bowl, combine the yeast and water for the starter. Let stand for ten minutes until the yeast is creamy, then mix in the flour thoroughly. In a second large bowl, combine the whole grains and the water for the soaker. Cover both bowls and let stand for 18-24 hours.
To make the bread, combine the starter, the bread flour, the salt and the soaker (with all of the remaining liquid) and mix to combine. Add the remaining 1/2 cup of water gradually as you mix the dough; the finished product should be stickier than normal bread dough but definitely workable and not a batter. Mix for about ten minutes, either by hand or with a bread hook on the lowest speed. Form the finished dough into a loaf in a greased pan and cover, and let it rise in a warm spot for about an hour to an hour and a half.
After the final proof, place the loaf in an oven preheated to 300F and bake until the loaf is dark brown and a skewer inserted in the top comes out clean, about 3 hours. After baking, remove the loaf from the pan and place on a rack to rest for 48 hours.
Coda
I started writing this at the beginning of March and am only posting what I currently feel confident in posting. I had not intended for the subject of grains to be a series, but the amount of material is simply staggering. Even this barely scratches the surface of the two grains that I've covered in depth.
As with my first Not By Bread Alone diary, the purpose of this and all of my food diaries is not exhaustive information, but rather providing a good jumping off point, using what I've learned, to understanding and being able to use the ingredients you have to their best advantage. Food knowledge is the first step to food security.