Einkorn is the only form of wheat on Earth that is completely unhybridized, containing the good gluten that even sensitive individuals can usually eat. Consuming it has four main benefits.
In my home, I’ve purchased organic white wheat and spelt in bulk for many years. Grinding it into fresh flour is the most nutritious and tastiest way to bake! I also did this to avoid the conventional toxic wheat in North America.
Farmers on this continent frequently desiccate their crops with glyphosate-containing herbicides. This practice is beneficial for ease and speed of harvest.
I credit this approach with my family avoiding any wheat allergies or problems digesting grains in general. This is true provided they are traditionally prepared. Bulgur is an example of this ancestral practice still widely used today.
For those of you who do have wheat issues, you’ll be encouraged to know that my husband used to have allergy and digestive issues with wheat years ago. He no longer does thanks to careful avoidance of wheat for several years, rebalancing the gut with traditional cooking, raw dairy, and the GAPS Diet.
Having a lot of experience dealing with wheat allergies, I can say that there certainly is a huge difference between modern processed wheat, products made with it such as seitan, and what you produce yourself at home.
I remember when I was breastfeeding my youngest child, if I ate so much as a mouthful or two of processed wheat at a restaurant in the form of a sandwich, slice of pizza, or a bread roll, she would spit up for one or sometimes even two days!
If I ate wheat that I ground myself and either sprouted, soaked, or sour leavened, however, she never had any spit up issues. To me, this was a huge testament to the radically improved digestibility of wheat that is prepared using the wise methods of ancestral cultures.
Einkorn Health Benefits over Modern Wheat
Given my success over the years with incorporating traditional methods of wheat preparation in my home, you may be surprised to learn that I’m switching the type I use.
What’s more, I’m switching 100%.
I still have about half of a large bucket of organic spelt to use up and a small amount of organic soft white wheat before the switch is complete. My goal is to have my family completely transitioned to einkorn wheat within another month or two.
Here are the 4 reasons why I am making the wholesale change to einkorn. Note that this strain is not to be confused with farro or heirloom wheat:
#1: Better Taste
My first experience baking with einkorn occurred after I received a thoughtful gift of, among other things, einkorn flour and wheat berries. I was delighted when I ground the einkorn into flour and saw how light and white it was.
I am not a fan of bran and am not of the food philosophy that all that fiber is actually good for you. Folks just think they need a lot of fiber as they are so constipated from all the processed foods they eat! Observing that einkorn, the most ancient and unhybridized form of wheat, has less bran compared with modern wheat was encouraging to me.
I was thrilled to see that my family thoroughly enjoyed the soaked waffles made with fresh einkorn flour. It was my first einkorn dish! Ever since they have asked me to use only that flour.
Like any Mom, I’m a sucker for kids who love my cooking and tell me so on a frequent basis. So, I made the easy decision to switch to einkorn completely for all my home baking.
#2: More Digestible
My husband’s stomach is my canary in the coal mine. If something is not easy to digest, he can tell and lets me know right away. As he has fully recovered from a wheat allergy, he knows which forms of wheat and which preparation methods sit best in his stomach and which do not.
While my properly prepared grain dishes made with wheat or spelt digest fine for him, once he tried the einkorn, he could tell that his digestion was even lighter for the experience. This is possibly because einkorn contains good gluten, different on a molecular level from modern gluten. It is much better tolerated by those with gluten sensitivity.
Better digestion means better absorption of nutrients, so einkorn surpassed the competition in that category.
#3: Einkorn is Visually Different
The first thing I noticed when I ground einkorn into flour for the first time was how much smaller a grain of einkorn is compared with a grain of modern wheat. They are about half the size!
In addition, the telltale crease on one side of a grain of modern wheat is absent from a grain of einkorn. The reason for the differences is that over the centuries, the genetics of wheat gradually changed due to human cultivation practices.
Year after year, farmers selected the seeds at harvest time that suited the goal of higher yields and more gluten. This worked best for big farms and larger-scale agriculture, production, and distribution of wheat products.
#4: Only Unhybridized Wheat on Earth
Einkorn is like most plants in that it is diploid. This means that contains only 2 sets of chromosomes. About 2,000 years after einkorn wheat, nature created emmer via the hybridization of 2 wild grasses. Consequently, emmer has 4 sets of chromosomes. Kamut and durum (bulgur) wheat are both descendants of emmer.
Spelt, an heirloom wheat, is the result of hybridization between cultivated emmer and another wild grass. Thus, it contains six sets of chromosomes. Modern wheat is a descendant of spelt.
Note that while humans extensively hybridized wheat over the millennia, there is currently no genetically modified wheat on the market. In the Western United States, however, test plots of GMO wheat have caused some contamination issues.
As you can see, einkorn is the purest and most ancient form of wheat available. It has only 2 sets of chromosomes with a very different composition of gluten. This form is easier to digest for many with non-genetic gluten intolerance.
Where to Source the Best Quality Einkorn
The only downside of einkorn is that it is not widely available and tends to be more expensive than other types of wheat. It is still quite new to the North American market.
My healthy shopping guide lists sources that I’ve vetted that are fast and affordable to ship to your door. I use these reliable companies myself and have for many years.
The organic einkorn wheat berries from these sources are grown and packaged on one secluded and pristine farm in Tuscany. It is very important to rotate crops on this farm. This is due to the hilly terrain, where yields are low and the land must stay fertile.
What this means is that this particular source of organic einkorn comes from fully pastured fields for five years prior. In addition, soil nutrition is enhanced using one year of crop rotation with the cultivation of chickpeas, lentils or fava beans. This ensures that there is no risk of cross-contamination with other types of grains. Each year’s crop of einkorn comes from truly fertile earth!
Have you tried einkorn wheat yet? If so, what observations have you made about this ancient, unhybridized wheat?
More Information
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I would like to plant it here in Brazil, because we don’t have it here. If somebody could send some seeds to me I would appreciate very much. 🙂
Thank you so much for this post!! I made einkorn sourdough bread (via your related recipe post) and I cannot believe that I can eat bread without GI problems for the first time since I was a pre-teen (I’m 40 now)! I’m not celiac but develop severe IBS following consumption of modern wheat. I’m the canary in the mine for my family (like your husband) and now I can introduce bread back into our house again. You are awesome, and your blog is a Godsend! Also, the Jovial Einkorn Baking cookbook from which you derived the sourdough bread recipe is fantastic! Thank you thank you thank you!!!
As a follow-up to my first comment, I tried eating einkorn flour without sour leavening (since there are several of these recipes in the einkorn cookbook) and had a terrible IBS reaction! Beware wheat-sensitive people, don’t eat this flour without sour leavening. I used coconut flour for the final steps of preparing the sourdough (like dusting the work surface) to prevent ingesting the raw einkorn flour.
Einkorn is originally from Turkey but has its modern name from German. i live in Germany and my local bakery offers Einkorn bread once a week. As a crop it has a terrible yield making it expensive to grow. maybe if it catches on like quinoa there might be more farms who’ll take the risk.
The bread is delicious! i eat it with 100% almond butter Yummy alternative to peanut butter sandwich!
Is this product OK for diabetics? What is the carb content, etc?
I got the advice/idea to purchase Jovial Einkorn Wheat Berries from your Blog here. I was excited and looking forward to getting started! I was so sad, disappointed, and disgusted to open my box today to find the new sealed unopened bag had several INSECTS (alive and crawling) in it!! 🙁 I wanted to mainly let you know so any Jovial customers here will check their bags (past and recent orders).
Wow! I’ve never had that problem in all the years I’ve purchased from them. I just got a 10lb bag of einkorn berries just a few weeks ago and it was fine. Contact Jovial, I’m sure they will send you another.
My family and I have moved over to Einkorn wheat over the past few years, not because any of us are Celiacs or gluten insensitive, just trying to get a bit more control over the food we eat, and we have been very pleased! Yes, it’s more expensive than other flours, but as with most things in life, sometimes you get what you pay for, and it’s been well worth it to us.
I don’t have celiac disease but have recently discovered that I am gluten sensitive. Some people I know are very skeptical about this, but I’ve noticed an improvement when I am gluten-free. I ordered Jovial Wheat Berries with some trepidation. But I found that I was able to enjoy boiled wheat the way I did as a child, and there was no adverse reaction at all. I’ll be ordering more of the wheat berries.
If the Einkorn wheat berries are not with the hull, then you cannot sprout. It’s then basically like white bread, no nutritional value, even if it’s easy on the stomach. That’s how this whole problem started with companies removing the bran, etc. from the grains. What good is it? Since we started eating whole grains, the problem of gluten came about and so now we ditch the grains like wheat, that may I remind readers….GOD MADE. Yes, we need non hybridized wheat, but for the life of me, I can’t understand selling wheat berries that remove all the good stuff and cannot be sprouted. I sprout organic hard winter wheat berries in 1 1/2 days and make flat bread with just spring water and the ground berries and they are delicious – sweet without any sugar or yeast added to the flour. I need to get the berries so I can sprout them. I used the Einkorn by Jovial Foods and just ground them and made my flat bread with just water and the bread was hard as a tire rubber. Horrible! I don’t want to have to add sugar and yeast. In the bible, the priests of Israel made their bread with just water and olive oil.
My Einkorn sprouts? LOL I soak it, sprout it, dehydrate and grind it without any problem!
Could I have the recipe for your bread with sprouted berries? I have never tried that before.
I found a great wealth of information on pinterest. I encourage everyone who is interested in this flour to check it out.
I’ve made biscotti’s, savory biscuits, bread, and pies. DELICIOUS.
I have had great success making breads and cookies with Einkorn flour. You can get information about this flour and recipes on Jovial Foods website. When using Einkorn in traditional recipes, it is recommended that you reduce the liquid in your recipe by 20%. Einkorn does not absorb water the way regular flour does. Your dough or batter will fill wetter or stickier with this flour. You can buy Einkorn directly from Jovial Foods. The more that you buy the more the discount. Also, free shipping. It only took me about 3-4 days to receive mine.
What about rye? Supposedly it only has 2 set of chromosomes too. I saw conflicting info about it on WAPF, so I would love your input.
I second this! I want to know which is better for the cost; I know Rye is probably a lot cheaper and easier to find in NZ.