Comment by locallost
6 hours ago
I tried both Emmer and Einkorn, but don't remember anything special about the end result. One of the flours/doughs was pretty yellow, but that's about it. It was a while ago and I only tried about a kg of each so my memory is fuzzy.
After the appearance of durum wheat, and then of the bread wheat, the products made from emmer and einkorn (and later also from spelt) have always been more expensive, without having any decisive advantages.
Nonetheless, these minor varieties of wheat have remained important due to their ability to grow in soil or climate conditions where the more productive modern varieties of wheat fail.
So they were frequently used as "backup" crops, for the cases when bad weather or pests destroyed the main wheat crops.
As said in the parent article, they may become again more important where soil has been made worse by modern agricultural practices.
I wrote a bit more, but deleted as I felt it was getting too long. I now see that what's left is missing some context. I also wrote that e.g spelt dough is in contrast very easy to recognize when you make it. It's very smooth and soft, it behaves differently, maybe even gooey. As for Emmer and Einkorn, I don't remember much other than the color for one of these.