Why doesn’t the West grind wet like the Mexicans?
Grinding boiled wheat.
Here are a couple of questions from my food historian companion-in-arms, Ken Albala.
So why do people say you need wheat to make bread? This is about 80 percent barley, and the rest sourdough wheat starter. Rose nicely, though dense, and quite pungently sour. But this is SUCH luscious bread. Exactly what I was looking for.Well surely people don’t say you need wheat to make bread. All kinds of grains (rye, maize, oats, etc etc) were used to make bread, and it was stretched with peas, beans, potatoes, chestnuts, or, bark or clay if you were really pushed. But if you wanted to rise a bit, then you need some wheat (or rye). Which is precisely what you have here.And here’s the weirdest part. I have no grain mill. Someday I want a rotary hand quern. Anyone know where to get one, has to be stone, please let me know. I never really wanted an electric flour mill – that’s the only reason I still don’t own one.So I soaked the barley for a few days and hand ground the grains in my big stone mortar. No big deal. Not gritty in the least. I wonder why people in the past without mills didn’t do this. Much easier than dry grains. And of course with corn in MesoAmerica, this is exactly what they did. Why is there no wet milling for bread in the West??? I am perplexed.
I want a stone rotary quern too.
The short answer, Ken, is that wet ground wheat does not produce a nice paste, wet ground maize when nixtamilized does. It produces disgusting little wormy shapes that are hard to deal with. See photo above. Grinding it dry produces nice flour. See photo below. (You don’t say what you got in your mortar. A paste? Or a slurry which is easier). And tellingly Mexicans don’t grind wheat wet.
But more thoughts.
1. You are using a stone mortar which makes it possible to shear the grains (a mixture of lateral and vertical motions) which is what breaks up the hard kernel. My impression is that many mortars in the Roman Empire, for example, were for pounding, as those marble ones you buy in gourmet shops are today for example. This does not produce decent flour.
Yes, the Ancient World pounded grains but that was to get the husk off (your barley was presumably already husked). So pounding de-husks, shearing grinds. Lots of confusion about this because people don’t realize that different kinds of mortars do different things.
2. You are making a tiny amount. That’s what? a one-pound loaf? Well, most people would have eaten two of those a day. Shearing to produce a flour (or wet a paste) with a rotary motion of the wrist is not very efficient because you can’t apply much weight. In grinding on a simple grindstone (lateral grindstone, metate) it’s the weight of the body that does the work. Very hard work too. In Mexico, mortars are never used for wet grinding grains, only for chiles and other easy-peasy jobs. And even then, if you want to grind a lot of nuts, chiles, spices for mole for example you get out the metate which is both more efficient and produces a better result.
3. So for serious grinding of grains, wet or dry, you use the lateral grindstone or metate. I have tried wet grinding wheat with these, not a metate, but a grindstone in Minorca. Quite a thrill since it was about 3000 years old.
The wheat was boiled not soaked. And it did not produce a decent masa at all as the photo above shows. The photo below shows what nice flour it produced when dry ground.
4. Once you change to the rotary quern, as the “West” did in the early centuries AD, it gets worse. Grinding wet just gums up between the stones and doesn’t flow out along the channels.
5. Indians from the South of the Subcontinent also wet grind but not for bread making. And that’s another whole story. For another time.
- Fast Food Better Food. Idea of the Day in the New York Times.
- A Tarahumara mother encourages her hungry child
Thanks Rachel! I knew you’ld know about this. But all the same it worked fine. I have a very coarse big stone mortar from Punjab. And probably a pound and a half of grain, pounded wet, sfot grains, which took maybe 20 minutes, but not a lot of work at all. Nothing wormy like you had above. Just a nice sticky dough. With the starter added, and a touch more flour to the right consistency. And it rose beautifully. So I guess I’m still surprised no one did this in the West. People without access to mills, but with access to an oven. Or maybe that’s unusual?
Ah Ken, now (thanks to the FB posting) I know that you are not getting wormy things because you are pounding not grinding. Big difference.
I ordered a metate from Mexico. I’d like to know what you think about my using it to make tortillas and also grinding chiles for mole. In your opinion, am I safe to use a metate for both? I’d hate to purchase a second metate if it wasn’t necessary.
Also, how do you clean a metate?
Thank you for your time and your blog :)
Hi Debra. You are quite safe using it for both masa and chiles. You will find that the masa has a play dough like texture that makes it easy to peel off and leave the metate clean. The chiles, on the other hand, tend to stick in the crevices. Mexicans use a little brush for cleaning crevices on metates and on molcajetes. I will post a picture later this morning. Any stiff brush of a similar kind and a splash of water should do. I don’t use detergent on mine.
Thank you for giving me necessary information for how to take care of my metate.what a wonderful thing is to have you available to answer questions on such a wonderful indigenous Mexican tool for cooking as the metate. We in the US are blessed to have you helping us. Thank you again.
I have ground sprouted red wheat berries on my big Mexican matate – not the easiest – so I now resort to the food processor. Sprouted wheat with a two day tail makes a sweet sticky paste. I use it in my yeast bread but it also makes a great addition to flat breads and crackers.
Hi Leni. Replied on Facebook. Confusing having this discussion in three places. But thanks very much and I have to try this.
stone rotary hand mill:
http://www.pfenningsfarms.ca/grainmilldetails.shtml#modelV
I have seen rotar querns for sale in SE-Asian grocers stores in Australia. They are used for wet grinding of rice, often glutinous rice for sweets, but I have seen them used in the production of rice noodles. In Malay it is a Batu Boh.
The rice/water mix that come out of the quern is quite liquid, not the sort of thing that you would want for making a loaf of wheat bread. As far as I know the range of uses for this type of mill is restricted, even in SE-Asia.
On the otherhand a lot of non-wheat grain products were consumed prior to the 20th century even in England. There are lots of oat cakes that are made from a fermented batter, it is possible that wet grinding could be used to, but since it wasn’t there might be some issues with this technique.
How to get rid of the impurities (germ, chaff, bran), especially with grains like oats and barley.
If you are soaking the grain the starch will convert to sugar. This is going to effect the bread making process and may be very hard to control (new grain v old).
The product might not store well, cook well or taste nice. Would have to be tested.
Thanks Adam. I’ve incorporated some of your comments in the post.
I was able to purchase a 15.5 lb Chinese Hand Quern from a Mr. Tane Chan’s Wok Shop, China Town San Francisco over the Internet. This is a cottage industry in China and he gets a few all along but his supplier has told him that they may not be shipping many more in the future. I am now awaiting arrival.
Excellent idea. I will follow up on this.
I was not so pleased with the Chinese hand quern. It is too small and light to be of any value. The stone or concrete?? is also questionable . It may be good for grinding spices , not even sure of that but you would starve trying to make flour. Looks like I got took on this one. I’ll use it for a teaching aid. I have found some on Alibaba.com that are the real thing. Shipping would be expensive but they are the real thing. I was quoted 160. USD EXW. I couldn’t market them for that price. I would like one made out of smooth basalt. Don’t see why the Mexicans who make mortar and pestle or Molcajotes out of smooth basalt , couldn’t also make these. I purchased a mortar and pestle 7 inch made out of solid granite . It is excellent for its uses. I think there would be a market for authentic querns or stone mills if the Mexicans would make them..
Too bad. And actually you have to be really careful buying metates and molcajetes in Mexico now. Many are just dressed up concrete and quite dangerous to use. Lost to say on basalt. I think both the techniques and the stone for rotary querns tends to be different. More on this soon. And thanks for all the info.
I just had a look at the wok shop quern. It looks like a wet grinding quern, used grind soaked rice into a batter for noodles for instance, not flour.
thanks. That would make sense. It would not have to be so powerful.
Hi im from India. Food historian seems to be a great thing to do! Totally agree with the fact that wet pastes are best ground on a slab..sil batta as they call it here.. I have been planning on grinding pesto on dem hehe. I wanted a rotary chakki hand mill too ànd luckily got a traditional carver to make a nice Light pink sandstone one.. No grit ànd very fine flour :)
Lucky you to have all those available.