SOURCING THE GRAIN
To this newly fledged baker, spelt made the most nutritional sense and satisfied all taste criteria. I set off to see if I could
hunt down locally produced grain and flour.
Spelt is grown in South Australia, Victoria and NSW, but the problem is getting large amounts across the border. The
bloke from Four Leaf Milling in South Australia quickly talked me out of ordering it through his company, the clincher
being that there was no guarantee the grain wouldn’t be stuck on the WA/SA border in quarantine for months on end.
THE ELUSIVE GRAIN
From Dumbleyung to Toodyay through to Calingari, thin leads to the elusive spelt were followed. The farmers at Calingari
couldn’t help as they had given the spelt away in favour of higher returns from other crops. A bloke from Eden Valley
told me in no uncertain terms that in his opinion, after 20 years of experimentation spelt was not viable as a commercial
crop. Sharon Weir of Three Springs kindly bequeathed me a kilo of the organic spelt flour and a few kilos of grain for
growing – they, too, had stopped growing spelt and continued with more commercially viable crops.
Spelt grain is a scarce commodity in WA and costs $1500 a tonne – four or five times the price of wheat. If it had been
grown organically it would have cost even more. Different farmers have tried spelt over the years, and I could find only
two growers in WA, both fairly boutique operations (at least when it comes to spelt), who are still persevering with this
crop.
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