First a quick description of CPO freekeh: It is young green spelt berry that has been roasted to produce a slightly smoky tasting grain; I have used it in salads, as a side dish, in risotto, as a hot cereal, pudding...the possibilities are only limited by your palates' imagination.
Erick Smith, the bearded ring-leader of Cayuga Pure Organics, was able to hook me up with a 5 # bag of freshly ground freekeh flour. Now it was time for me to decipher the code (aka figure out what the hell I was going to do with it). Erick told me that it is used to thicken soups in Eastern Europe, but other than that I didn't have much of a lead. The trick when dealing with these fancy flours and grains is not to be intimidated by them; it's only roasted green spelt that has been milled into flour. There is the key...spelt! So I did some research on spelt flour and decided to apply the findings to the freekeh flour. One important note on freekeh flour: the gluten levels are low because it is harvested before they have a chance to mature; it is not going to hold together like a high gluten bread flour. Armed with this information, I developed recipes for freekeh brownies and sourdough freekeh crackers (using whole grain sourdough starter produced from wild i-town yeast); both turned out great and recipes will be arriving here shortly!
