bake - January 2020 - 32

tracing back to
landrace grains

revered in Antebellum plantation
inventories and recipes for its high
mineral and ﬂoral characteristics
and its creamy mouthfeel. He found
this corn in a bootlegger's ﬁeld near
Dillon, South Carolina, in 1997, and
planted and harvested his own ﬁrst
crop of 30 acres in 1998.
Known as Carolina Gourdseed
White, the single-family hand-select
dated back to the late 1600s. When
Roberts passed the Gourdseed grits

around to chefs in Charleston and
Atlanta, they were eager for more.
By 2001, Roberts was able to
take on full production of certiﬁed
organic Carolina Gold rice and a
"Thirteen Colony" wheat called Red
May. He also does polycrop grains
that consist of multi-species plots of
specialty grains. In addition, Anson
Mills grows Japanese buckwheat,
French oats and Mediterranean
wheat and Italian farro.

supporting local sources
In Ann Arbor, Michigan, Zingerman's Bakehouse is tapping into more
local grains than ever after installing a 26-inch stone mill from New
American Stone Mills. "Now we are buying the berries of grains
and milling daily and injecting freshly milled ﬂours into all sorts of
recipes," says Frank Carollo, a managing partner for Zingerman's
Bakehouse. "We make a fougasse with freekeh, Michigan spelt and
Warthog grown in Illinois. We make a porridge, and that's a super
delicious bread. Our new breads are featuring freshly milled whole
grains, and typically a combination of them."

Bake Magazine Digital Special Report 1 | Volume 1 | bakemag.com

JOHN UNREIN

Glenn Roberts, the founder of Anson
Mills in Charleston, South Carolina,
shares that landrace grains don't
follow the rules; they adapt to the
speciﬁc environment where they are
grown. "Everything we do is based
on ﬂavor, impact, truth and future
security," Roberts says. "There are
a lot of things to play with that are
of antiquity. Take what you don't
know and turn it into fabulous food."
Roberts is regarded as a pivotal
pioneer in bringing landrace grains
(prehybridized varieties of corn,
wheat, rice and other grains) back
from extinction. At one time in his
career, Roberts helped plan restaurant menus that were intended to
offer period-authentic dishes. There
was a huge obstacle. Not only did
supplies of heirloom ingredients not
exist; they were extinct. In particular,
grains of the era like Carolina Gold
rice, lynchpin of the Antebellum
cuisine of South Carolina, were
nearly impossible to source.
Roberts started by growing smallplot Carolina Gold in Charleston
and worked with a rice geneticist
in Texas to reinvigorate the seed,
which, through neglect and inactivity, had begun to display characteristics of its sister rice, Carolina
White. To support his experiments in
Carolina Gold, he began to research
other regional heirloom grains of the
era that he could throw into production more quickly. The research
began with corn.
In 1995, Roberts explored rural
back roads looking for the famous
white Carolina mill corn that was

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