Yes.

Our white flour is sent thru a finer milling process that removes the germ and the bran. We do not bleach nor treat the flour in any other way. You will notice that the nutritional profile is different between the two flours. The whole grain has higher fat and fiber, while the white shows slightly higher carbohydrate and sugar percentages.

Spelt is a whole grain pasta, complete with germ and bran, unlike white pasta which is mostly starch.

Those suffering from severe allergic reactions should consult their doctor.

We sell spelt in a number of forms. Many of our customers buy spelt kernels which they later grind into flour as needed.

We have three small mills that we use to assist us in the analysis of spelt samples. They are K-tech, Whisper Mill and a Vita-Mix with a grain attachment. They all work fine on spelt.

We suggest that you use a high quality spelt product like our Vita-Spelt brand. The quality of crops are affected by a number of things; seed, soil, weather. Just like other grains, not every field of spelt will produce bread quality grain. Purity Foods inspects and test bakes samples taken from every field prior to harvest.

Purity Foods insists that the farmers growing spelt for their customers buy certified seed from one of 4 varieties of spelt known to have good baking characteristics.

We also assure high quality by paying premiums to growers whose crop meet certain criteria. Once in our possession and de-hulled, we run finished product through scouring and aspiration equipment that only one other company in the organic foods industry has available today.

Spelt can make fantastic breads and delicious pastries. It has a very fragile gluten which means that the initial mix time (when water is first added to the flour) has to be no more than 4 minutes, 3 1/2 minutes is a good target. Mix the flour/liquid enough to get the dough to become homogenous. Once mixed you can treat the dough just like it were wheat from then on. A couple of other hints to achieve higher loaf volume:

• Take 1/2 of all ingredients (including the yeast), place in bowl and mix until you produce the dough.
• Cover and place in accessible spot for later use.
• Within 5 to 12 hours add the remainder of all ingredients to the bowl (sponge dough), mix and proceed as normal. Spelt flour is high in complex carbohydrates and, as such, needs to have some of the complex carbohydrates reduced to simple sugars so that the yeast will have a strong food source. By setting a sponge, you are releasing the enzymes in the flour that are activated when wet, to begin the conversion process. The resulting bread will have better cell structure, greater loaf volume and a lighter crust.
• Replace some whole grain spelt flour with Vita Spelt white flour- you will get more volume and a lighter loaf while still keeping many of the good characteristics of whole spelt.

We think that you will find that if you follow some of these suggestions, spelt will open up a whole world of baking opportunities to you.

Spelt is indeed an interesting grain. It provides great opportunity for the organic farmer to distance himself from the price fluctuations of staple crops while growing a product that tastes good and is good for you as well.

Purity Foods insists that the farmers growing spelt for their bakery customers buy certified seed from one of 4 varieties of spelt known to have good baking characteristics. Samples are taken prior to harvest, then de-hulled, milled and test baked. Purity Foods pays premiums to growers whose products meet certain criteria.

Spelt responds well with minimum attention, and in poorer soils. It is generally planted in the fall with harvest in July. Purity Foods is currently involved in the development of a "spring" spelt.

The thing that differentiates spelt from wheat products is that it is not free threshing. The product dropped out of sight back in the early 1900's for this very reason, a higher cost compared to wheat. Back then there were over 600,000 acres of spelt grown in the US.

Spelt has to be mechanically de-hulled which adds 2 additional manufacturing steps to the process, the hulls surrounding the kernel actually represent 30-35% of the weight of the product. To get good farmers to grow the product we must be able to provide them with the same return per acre as what can be expected from competing products. To have a good quality spelt you must have quality growers! We don't begrudge the grower the good price we pay them to grow it.

You can learn more about spelt by visiting www.spelt.com.

If you would like to join our grower base for the upcoming planting season, please contact us at 517-351-9231.

Spelt is one of three husked grains; the other two grains are Einkorn and Emmer. Emmer and Einkorn have fewer chromosomes. Emmer is a diploid, meaning that it has 14 chromosomes. The confusion comes from the fact that all of these grains are ancient grains and have been called by common names by people using these grains for thousands of years.

The fact of the matter is that spelt is a stand alone grain. By stand alone we mean that you can have 100% spelt flour in bread and have a quality loaf of bread. Spelt does not need another grain to hold it together in pasta or in any other application that we know of. The Einkorn and the Emmer are not stand alone products. They need to be blended with wheat in order to make a desirable finished product.