In Search of the Perfect Loaf by Samuel Fromartz

Author:Samuel Fromartz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group, USA
Published: 2014-08-06T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

Turkey Red: Heritage Grains and the Roots of the Breadbasket

Rewind to 1912: A fifteen-year-old Kansas boy named Earl Clark noticed a plant with unusual black wheat kernels on his family’s farm, so he saved three of these seeds and kept them to plant again. Clark, who went on to become a renowned wheat breeder in Sedgwick, Kansas, found that these seeds matured more quickly and produced a bountiful crop, so he continued to propagate them. Named Blackhull, the variety spread, accounting for a third of the Kansas wheat crop by the 1930s. Clark went on to breed eleven new varieties, such as Red Chief, which was more erect and vigorous than Blackhull and thrived in poor soil. It became a popular variety in southern Kansas in 1944. Clark then crossed Red Chief with another variety from which a single plant was selected—KanKing—found growing amid weeds. Released to farmers in 1952, KanKing was then crossed back with another offspring of Red Chief. Their progeny, a white wheat selected over eight generations, was released as Clark’s Cream in 1972. White wheat has a milder flavor than more common red wheat, because it lacks the dark pigments in its bran. It is primarily exported to Asia, where its light color is favored by noodle makers. Clark’s Cream also became popular with Kansas wheat farmers who still plant it today. I have a bag of the flour sitting on my kitchen shelf and I blend it with freshly milled corn flour and spelt to make a marvelous sourdough waffle. I normally wouldn’t think twice about it—it’s just “white wheat,” after all—yet its lineage can be traced all the way back through a dozen selections to black-hulled seeds plucked from a Kansas field by an observant teenager a century ago. One plant, one field, one kid, in the most important wheat-growing region of the country, all the way to my waffles.

When I talked about Clark with Mark Nightengale, the manager of a farmer-owned flour milling company in western Kansas called Heartland Mill, he told me that he had tried to grow all of Clark’s varieties on his family’s 3,000-acre farm. But they could not yield as much grain as modern wheat varieties nor tolerate intensive mixing—the giant mixers that make today’s soft, pan-loaf breads. As a result, many of these once-dominant varieties had fallen out of favor by the 1950s, as industrial bakers sought out higher-gluten wheat that could withstand industrial fabrication. The only one of Clark’s varieties that Heartland still milled was Clark’s Cream, which is where I bought the flour.

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