Wheatberry Resources

When Enterprise farm share members got a pound of wheatberries (via Four Star Farms) this week, we had to laugh. Because, um, about a month ago, I talked my housemates into letting me bulk order a twenty-five pound bag of wheatberries.

That is a large amount of wheatberries.

Wheat berries are the whole grain of the wheat plant (the bran, germ, and endosperm). If you grind wheatberries, you get whole wheat flour. If you refine it down to the endosperm and grind that, you get white flour. For serious, I did not know where flour came from until recently.

Other things you can do with the champagne of whole grains* include sprouting them, growing wheatgrass from them (popular with hippies and cats), or fermenting them in possibly the strangest recipe I've ever seen on Epicurious (and the reader reviews are priceless).

If you're so unlucky as to have only a pound, well, 1) I can help you out, and 2) I suggest boiling them and eating them. We've talked about making wheatberry salads (a consistent potluck favorite) and wheatberries for breakfast here before.

I've been evangelizing wheatberries recently with a little hand-drawn zine (PDF), and curating a bit.ly bundle of wheatberry recipes (comment with your suggestions, and I'll add 'em).

* Because they sort of pop on your tongue when you eat them.