I just spent the past week with relatives in Tucson, Arizona, home of the flour tortilla, its iconic cultural marker tied to Northern Mexico and the Southwest U.S. Its cultural importance supersedes the border. Whenever I’m here, I wrap everything I eat in them. Somehow they are soft and chewy, with a unique elasticity, and often they are gossamer thin, speckled with bits of char.
Underpinning the iconic food is the wheat that was originally used to make it: Sonoran white wheat. Spanish missionaries brought this heirloom wheat variety to North America in the 17th century, and it was first planted in the Sonoran desert.
The marvelous Mexican TV personality and cook Pati Jinich featured Tucson and the grain in her show Tucson: Gateway to Sonora. She talks to famed baker Don Guerra of Barrio Bread, who has built a bread business linked to his local regional grain economy. Every time I visit the city, I bring back a bag of his Sonoran Blend, a mix of organic white Sonoran, hard red spring and red fife grains.
Sonora white wheatberries. Photo by Nan Kohler of Grist and Toll.
The wheat is planted in the fall, then due to its hardiness, goes into a type of dormancy and overwinters, coming back to life in the spring. It continues to grow until it’s ready to harvest in July. The berries are relatively soft and easy to grind, even for home millers, and the flour that is milled from them is white, even while retaining the germ, unlike winter wheat, which is a darker, nearly brown color.
The wheat has resurged in the past decade thanks to its versatility in baked goods, sweet flavor, and white color. It’s a way of using a whole grain wheat that doesn’t look or taste like whole grain wheat. Use Sonora where you would use lower-protein pastry flour — in quick breads, muffins, cookies, biscuits, pancakes, cakes, and tortillas of course! If you’re just starting your landrace grain journey, try mixing it half and half with a good quality all-purpose flour. It adds a tremendous amount of flavor. If you’re a sourdough devotee, you can also make a loaf with a fantastic and aromatic crust by subbing out 30-40% of your flour for Sonora.
Freshly milled Sonora White Wheat is creamy in color and sweetly nut in taste. Photo courtesy of Grist & Toll.
Local miller Nan Kohler of Grist & Toll says Sonora white is “a soft white landrace wheat variety with low protein and mellow gluten.” She continues, “We use it for virtually all pastry baking. Its pale, creamy color and flavor profile also make it a very stealth whole grain flour – it doesn’t look or taste whole grain-y.” She says that flavor notes of the flour are raw almonds, buttermilk, raw oats, raw corn, and sweet cream. She has a marvelous recipe for a large slab of shortbread to share. And here’s her scone recipe. Just add strawberries to it. There are quite a few recipes using Sonora white wheat flour on the website. Kohler also pointed out the importance of several women to the story of Sonora resurgence in California. ”There is no Sonora [in California] without Monica Spiller - she researched and got a tiny amount of seed from a seed bank. And cotton grower Sally Fox was the first to grow it out. A lot of women are important to the CA Sonora story who don’t always receive credit for their work because they aren’t part of the local food scene.”
Sonora wheat strawberry scones from Grist & Toll. Photo courtesy of Grist & Toll.
Noted baker and teacher Clemence DeLutz of Gourmandise says, “It’s soft enough for subbing out for all-purpose, but strong enough to make a sandwich loaf stand up. Which is why I recommend baking breads made with Sonora in loaf pans (for the extra support). The varieties of Sonora grown in California have been remarkably strong in gluten and extensibility.”
Sonora white wheat flour makes a delicious pie crust. Photo courtesy of Grist & Toll.
Roxana Jullapat generously shares a new 100% Sonora wheat pie dough recipe from her upcoming book. Co-owner of Friends and Family in Hollywood, Jullapat is a champion of our local grain shed and author of what is considered to be an important work on working with whole grains, Mother Grains.
Sonora white wheat flour is easily found online from a variety of regional mills, but why not support our local mill Grist & Toll?
Roxana Jullapat’s Sonora Wheat Pie Dough
Makes enough dough for two 9-inch pie crusts, one 9-inch lattice top pie or one 9-inch double crust pie. The following directions are for a single blind baked crust.
Ingredients
- 300 grams (2¼ cups) whole-grain Sonora wheat flour
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 224 grams (1 cup/2 sticks/8 ounces) cold unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes
- 160 ml (⅔ cup) iced water
Instructions
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Combine the flour, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl. Toss the cold butter cubes in the flour. Quickly cut the cold butter cubes into the dry ingredients by pinching the butter with your fingertips—imagine you’re snapping your fingers—until the mixture resembles a coarse meal with butter pieces the size of a cornflake.
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Make a well in the center with your hands and pour in the ice water. Mix gently with your hands until a raggedy dough forms, don’t worry if bits of butter are still visible. Transfer to a lightly floured surface, divide into two portions and knead each briefly into a ball. Wrap them tightly with plastic. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and up to 2 days.
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To shape a single crust, remove one of the doughs from the refrigerator. Lightly coat the pie pan with nonstick spray. With a rolling pin, flatten the dough into a circle about 11 inches in diameter, dusting with flour as necessary to prevent sticking. Pick up the dough by rolling it onto the rolling pin and lay it into the pie pan. Gently press the dough into the bottom of the pan and up the sides, leaving a lip on the edge. Trim any excess dough with kitchen scissors, leaving 1 inch of dough hanging from the edge of the pan. Gather the dough to form a border along the edge of the pan. Crimp the border pinching the dough with your fingertips, forming small triangles along the edge. Refrigerate the shaped pie crust for 20 minutes -chilling prevents the dough from shrinking.
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Place an oven rack in the middle position and preheat the oven to 350ºF. Cut a 12-inch parchment paper circle. Place the pie pan on a baking sheet. Coat the pie crust lightly with nonstick spray and line it with the parchment. Fill three-quarters of the way with dried beans or pie weights. Bake for 20 minutes. Then rotate the baking sheet and bake for 20 to 25 minutes more. Rotating the baking sheet halfway through the baking process will ensure that the pie shell bakes evenly. To check if the pie crust is ready, carefully lift a section of the parchment and see if the bottom is golden. Let cool for at least 1 hour before removing the parchment and pie weights. Baking your pie crust before the filling goes in is known as “blind baking,” and it’s a crucial step to prevent the bottom of the crust from getting soggy.