Grain
Common Wheat
D tier
Common Wheat is the trade and culinary name for bread wheat from Triticum aestivum, encompassing hard and soft, red and white, winter and spring market classes. It is the default wheat of global flour mills, distinguished from durum and from hulled ancient species such as spelt, emmer, and einkorn by free-threshing kernels and a wide gluten-performance range. In the kitchen and bakery, common wheat becomes bread flour, all-purpose flour, pastry flour, and wholemeal; berries are cracked, rolled, soaked, or fermented for porridge, tabbouleh-style salads, and sourdough. Pasta and couscous more often use durum, but common wheat still appears in egg noodles, dumpling skins, and many industrial pasta blends.
Also known as: US market classes of common wheat, Canadian Western Red Spring and related grades, Common wheat (Triticum aestivum) milling grades, Atta and maida from common wheat, Common wheat for noodles and mantou
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Characteristics
Preparations
Traits
Grading systems
Grades are placed along a shared scale so systems can be compared side by side.
History
Common wheat arose as hexaploid bread wheat in the Fertile Crescent and became the staple free-threshing cereal of settled agriculture.
Common wheat replaced older hulled wheats across much of Europe and West Asia for everyday bread and porridge.
Global commodity markets organised common wheat into hardness, colour, and season classes for millers.
Standardised market classes (hard red winter, hard red spring, soft red winter, white wheats) defined common-wheat trade grades.
High-yielding semi-dwarf common wheat underpinned food-security programmes worldwide.
Specialty bakers and whole-grain programmes renewed interest in landrace and heritage common-wheat lots.