This article is about the cultivar of what is whole wheat flour called in australia. For the Turkish döner wrap, see dürüm.
Triticum durum or Triticum turgidum subsp. Durum in Latin means “hard”, and the species is the hardest of all wheats. This refers to the resistance of the grain to milling, in particular of the starchy endosperm, implying dough made from its flour is weak or “soft”. Commercially produced dry pasta, or pasta asciutta, is made almost exclusively from durum semolina. Husked but unground, or coarsely ground, it is used to produce the semolina in the couscous of North Africa and the Levant. The use of wheat to produce pasta was described as early as the 10th century by Ibn Wahshīya of Cairo. Most of the durum grown today is amber durum, the grains of which are amber-colored due to the extra carotenoid pigments and are larger than those of other types of wheat.
Durum has a yellow endosperm, which gives pasta its color. When durum is milled, the endosperm is ground into a granular product called semolina. Good yields can be obtained by irrigation, but this is rarely done. In the first half of the 20th century, the crop was widely grown in Russia. In the Middle East and North Africa, local bread-making accounts for half the consumption of durum.
On the other hand, many countries in Europe produce durum in commercially significant quantities. Durum wheat is subject to four processes: cleaning, tempering, milling and purifying. First, durum wheat is cleaned to remove foreign material and shrunken and broken kernels. Then it is tempered to a moisture content, toughening the seed coat for efficient separation of bran and endosperm. To produce bread, durum wheat is ground into flour. The flour is mixed with water to produce dough.
The quantities mixed vary, depending on the acidity of the mixture. The quality of the bread produced depends on the viscoelastic properties of gluten, the protein content and protein composition. The Plant List: A Working List of All Plant Species”. Natural Resources Conservation Service PLANTS Database.
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