LAND OF WHEAT

LAND OF WHEAT


Wheat is one of the oldest foods in history and most widespread in the world. It is also the main source of calories from vegetable consumed by man . Haunts the variety : some talk at 30 000 types .

It is one of the oldest foods in history and most widespread in the world. It is also the main source of calories from vegetable consumed by man . Haunts the variety : there are those who speak in 30000 types .

After the fruit of the tree of good and evil , which turned out to Adam and Eve from Paradise , speaks of wheat 's oldest literary reference about the history of food. Archaeological evidence effectively attest their presence in the most remote addresses known to man , in Jarmo , in the northeast of what is now Iraq , ancient Mesopotamia , around 7000 BC Since then , the product has spread planet apart and there is no latitude or longitude where it will not germinate.

There is wheat in Jericho , the Middle East , 250 meters below sea level . And there is wheat in Tibet , Central Asia , 3500 meters above. For its spectacular tolerance , wheat thrives in winter , cold seasons of Iceland and also in the wild heat of Ethiopia .

Actually , you can not describe any sort of broader or more importantly food. Not even a brother his rice .

On the whole globe , the essential raw material is always a grain . At least half of the cultivated soils of the earth surrenders to a genus of cereal. Thanks to cereal humanity absorbs approximately 80 % of the calories you need. Wheat provides two fifths of that pie . Even the two most overcrowded nations and simultaneously among the least well fed the entire planet as India and China .

Almost 55 % of properties in Australia are home grown wheat. Their vibrantly planting helps sustain prosperous economies of countries like the United States and Canada . And grows excellent quality wheat in different regions so as Cuba , Egypt and Afghanistan.

It was in Asia , moreover , between Afghanistan and Israel , that wheat originated naturally in ancient times . Later, probably during the Neolithic ( between 10 000 and 7000 years ago) , came to be seeded with some organization. Today , it seems impossible to set the number of its varieties . A German botanist , Helmuth Pelshenke , recorded 12 000 . Vazilov The Soviet scientist Nicolai , more meticulous, noted 30 000. All this multiplicity that relief! derived from only two roots , so-called hard wheat, or Triticum durum and common wheat, one of which is used for bread flour, Triticum vulgare . Interestingly and spectacularly , the T. durum not know anything beyond ten or twelve leads . All others are part of the genealogy of T. vulgare including , lost for eternity , certainly the mother of the breed lies , spontaneous kind of millennia ago .

In an attempt to put some order in this immense confusion, modern botanicals ended up dividing the types of wheat in at least three categories according to the number of chromosomes in their cells findable Playlist: seven, fourteen , or 21 pairs . The early varieties , according to this proposition , ostentariam mere seven pairs , as a curious and prosaic Ethiopian plant, whose spike settles a single grain . The leads of T. vulgare, in turn, is generally prove more sophisticated carry fourteen pairs. In your department is located safely biblical wheat, Kussemeth Abraham . Also T. durum has fourteen pairs. The species is customarily dubbed " wheat noodles " because her Arabs and Sicilians began to perpetrate their masses in enviroments 1100.1200 after Christ .

Hence , a step up , stand out types of 21 pairs , contemporary hybrids actually those of the past 2000 years that , by intention or accident , since the acids of the Greeks and Romans, were by mixing and perfecting . Because of this orgy of genetic, uncontrolled and uncoded weddings , the grower of wheat, to sow it rarely knows what variety later will reap . The process is maddening . There are times when all seeds look exactly the same type of a clearly identified and determined . Then mowed the ears , one realizes that the grains do not offer uniformity in shape , size or even color. In general, stand out , for example, yellow beans and red beans . Only that the proportion is not repeated it changes , yes , madly , each new crop .

To further complicate the situation , U.S. farmers have devised their own independent classification, namely:

Durum wheat , red, winter From high protein , used in ultrafermentados and stiff bread flour.

Durum wheat , red spring With more protein also used in the same genre of breadmaking , as the Italians .

Durum wheat noodles in clear appearances .

White wheat appearances in non - fermented breads, pastas to cakes , confectionery , biscuits and noodles second line .

Common wheat winter appearances rather selectively in breads , cakes , biscuits and confectionery second line .

The characteristics of each type are more understandable when considering a grain of wheat, and describes its inner composition. Fundamentally , a grain of wheat is formed by its bark , for a germ and endosperm . The shell represents 14.5 % of the weight . The endosperm , 83 % . The germ , 2.5 % . Each of these parts differs from the other in terms of their chemical formulation. The germ in the kernel of grain is less minerals and vitamins ; As with most grains , the amount of such substances decreases from outside to inside .

The objective of milling wheat, basically , remove the skin and separate the endosperm from the germ. Endosperm flour if you can , in all its possibilities . Roughly speaking, the endosperm of hard wheat contains a higher amount of starch . In the manufacturing process of the flour , which leads to the production of pasta , the starch gelatinisation is the core of the mass , causing it to resist much longer cooking operations , thus obtaining the so-called al dente point . Instead, a pasta with less starch , pasta softens and sometimes crumbles .

It was an instinctive act of chewing suggest that primitive man the idea of crushing the grains of wheat between two rock chips . With the passage of decades , the lower portion of the stone turned into cavity, the principle of the theory of the pylon . Initially , nomadism , is obviously used laptop chips . When the man sat , sedentary , hit him the light to work with much larger pieces . The mill was created . Then it rained . The water that is blended the flour into a smooth paste . And that folder , after drying and autofermentada the open, showed interestingly edible . The bread was ready unintentionally .

For the occurrence of this result , crucially contributes a component of wheat, gluten , marriage of two proteins that become formidably elastic contact with moisture and heat . More protein and therefore more elastic . More elasticity, more aerated spaces in body mass . Because those spaces that induce accommodation of yeasts, autoproliferantes communities that lead to the growth of the mass . Primitive man did not know that .

Only , by inhabiting caves , stone houses or wooden overcrowded scenarios of fungi and yeasts , its mass increased volume without particular efforts . Someone smarter for sure one day discovered the wonder of injecting fungi collected from a wall or a trunk folder in your ground wheat and water and was delighted with the phenomenal result, the mass increased three to four times its initial weight .

Thanks to this rare peculiarity , wheat became inevitable partner of human evolution . The citizen of the Neolithic have cultivated wheat in the enviroments 7000 BC in Mesopotamia , near the Euphrates and Tigris rivers .

The Sumerian language, dated 3100 BC , gloriously reports that the man was able to perpetrate then eight different drinks, fermented from wheat , possibly moms of all beers . The Sumerian civilization , in fact , reached the refinement of irrigating their crops , so as to ensure the crops in the dry seasons . And the fascination of tradition continues.

Why the holy bread of the Hebrews , matzah , has no yeast in their composition ? Simply because the followers of Moses was compelled to flee hastily from their enslavers in Egypt . In the rush , had no way to add yeast to your usual pasta , your haversack travel . Survived , anyway , with altanaria . And today celebrating the feat in his Passover with unleavened matzah . The Phoenicians called it a god , Dagon , in honor of wheat . Athens became a maritime power because of their lack of geographical product Greeks needed pick him beyond the ocean , in the Middle East . In their popular assemblies , which were held ten times each year , the Hellenic invariably began discussions for analyzing the reports about the preciousness of inventories .

Rome took control of the Mediterranean around 400 BC because an Athenian defeat at Syracuse , on the island of Sicily , destroyed the entire Greek fleet and IHE cut off supplies of wheat, food essential to the discipline of his soldiers . The imperial expansionism of Rome then took the wheat from the entire Middle East to Europe. And the imperial expansionism of Europe by navigations of the sixteenth century , took the wheat to the New World . Christopher Columbus personally planted the first seed in the West Indies , in Isabela, Puerto Rico . The same Spanish landed product in Argentina . Incidentally, the wheat does not requires special practice, grows quickly and does not ask many conservation care , especially in temperate climates . Stand the cold and heat and just cringe when excess moisture is accompanied , simultaneously , the excess temperature. Irony. The problem does not occur because this dual action inhibits their growth , quite the contrary . Is because wheat grows excessivamente.Tanto that rises glorious in the heavens , a visual lush green and does not bother to form ears .



Superinteressante Issue 35 Land of wheat