May 8, 2020 - 7:13am
Sourcing European Berries
I live in the US and would like to purchase European (prefer western Europe) grown organic white wheat berries but am not finding anything online! Does anyone have any sources they would be willing to share? I'd like to purchase at least a 50 lb bag (or 2 - 25 lb bags) but not less than that amount.
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what's the reason for specifically European?
I've seen imported European flour for sale in the US, but never imported wheat berries.
Methinks your solution might entail buying from a European source, and having it shipped.
I would doubt that anyone in the US is importing European raw berries by the pallet or by the container-load, so it would be an expensive one-off kind of shipment.
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For my US sources, it looks like the 2019 spring and fall harvests of organic wheat berries is sold out (montanaflour.com, and clnf.org). The 2020 spring harvest of winter wheat is either ongoing or soon to happen, and we have to wait a few months for the 2020 fall harvest of spring wheat.
If you're willing to buy American organic white wheat berries, check those two sources in the summer and again in the fall. (If you can get together a group order, you might qualify for CLNF.org's company-truck-delivery, with 5% shipping charge and $450 min order. See their web site. It looks like they have a route that goes through East TN and North Carolina.)
I think user barryvabeach buys hard white _winter_ wheat, which is harvested in spring/early-summer. So... as that crop is the next to be harvested, ask him for his source, and maybe you can get in line.
Wheat Montana grows some _organic_ Prairie Gold, but it is spring wheat (harvested in fall). I buy my non-organic Prairie Gold from clnf.org. They are out of organic. Their web site will take an order for non-organic. But... their Covid notice says not all products listed as in stock on the web site will acttually be in stock.
www.centralmilling.com/store has hard white wheat listed, both organic and non-organic, but I forget if it is in stock.
This is why: https://blog.publicgoods.com/why-european-bread-might-be-better-for-your-stomach/ I've heard this over and over from friends who have traveled to EU and the Middle East and thought I might see if I could get my hands on some and try it out. I have ordered wheat berries here in the US for over a decade... but have yet to travel to EU and test the theory myself was supposed to go this month, but alas... covid.
I admit I just skimmed the article you posted, but two things I picked up were the possibility that soft wheat would be better for digestion, and that US berries are farmed using pesticides. Soft white wheat is pretty easy to find in the US, though most of us buy the hard variety, I have some soft, and you should have no trouble finding it. As to pesticides, I just skimmed this article, but it suggests that if you buy organic berries, you should not have to worry about glyphosate and most other artificial pesticides. https://rodaleinstitute.org/blog/wait-organic-farmers-use-pesticides/
Central Milling sells 5 pound and 50 pound bags, though the 5 pound bags were not available when I checked today. https://centralmilling.com/product/organic-whole-soft-white-wheat-berries/
That author's situation sounds like Briton Vanessa Kimbell's experience as described in her book Sourdough School. https://www.amazon.com/Sourdough-School-ground-breaking-making-gut-friendly-ebook/dp/B07BPV28CC?tag=froglallabout-20 (Currently $6.99 US in Kindle edition.) Vanessa also discovered that it was not a gluten issue, but sourdough, wild yeast, that allowed her to finally eat bread without getting sick. Bread from European wheat still made her sick, unless it was sourdough.
The blog author may also not undertand that Europeans use the term "hard wheat" to describe durum, and anything that is not durum is described as "soft wheat." IOW, North Amercian "hard wheat" is European "soft wheat". Of course, there are differences in strains/varieties too: commercial North American wheat, other than heirloom varieties, is highly hybridized. So when Europeans say "soft wheat" they do not mean the lower protein kind of soft wheat similar to what is grown in North America for pastry, cakes, etc. You can see this on the Caputo web site. Everything that is not durum is "grano tenero", even high protein varieties. www.mulinocaputo.it/en/flour
I think of it as a difference in where the "dividing line" is placed. In the US we place the dividing line for hard-versus-soft between our "bread wheat" and our "pastry wheat." Europeans place the dividing line befween durum and everything else. This may be due to how the word "durum" (literally "hard" from latin, "duro" in Spanish/Italian) is more obvious to them as meaning "hard." So anything not durum/duro is taken to be soft.
If you've milled durum or Kamut, you've seen why it is described by growers as "vitreous" or glassy, or almost translucent, being harder than our hard bread wheat.