Baking bread from wild wheat growing in a vacant lot near our house

Last year I noticed that some of the grasses growing on the hills behind my in-laws' house were some sort of grain.  During our frequent walks along the trails we would stop and sample a few of them.  When the seeds were still green they were sweet and grassy, but as they dried some of them started looking more and more like wheat.  Soon I convinced myself that they were, in fact, some sort of wheat, and I decided to do some experimenting.

I don't know if this was once farmed, but I sincerely doubt it given the hilly terrain.  Apparently these grains thrive in this environment all by themselves.  Despite the for sale sign visible here, this lot has been vacant for at least twenty years, and probably since before anyone inhabited the Salt Lake valley.

The wheat closest to the sidewalk was the fullest, perhaps because it catches more of the rain runoff there.

We are moving from Utah soon, so this summer was my last chance.  Fortunately for me, the grain ripened fairly early and has been golden for at least a week now.  So, the kids and I went to work.  First, I harvested an armful of stalks from a vacant lot just up the street where the heads of grain were full and dry.  As it turned out, that was the easiest part of the process, even though my only tool was a pair of small gardening sheers.  

My harvest and harvesting tools.

Next, the kids and I set out to try to thresh the grain from the straw.  I have seen several different techniques on YouTube, but I wanted to do it without making too much of a mess in the yard, and I didn't have the proper tools to do it quickly, so we tried a few techniques.  The kids and I tried separating the grains by hand, but that was way too inefficient.  Next we separated the grain heads from the stalks and tried beating them with random objects inside a drum.  That worked, but again did not yield much for the effort.  Finally, I resorted to loading them a few handfuls at a time in the food processor, which yielded approximately 70-80% of the grains.

We tried a few different manual methods to extract the seeds, but ultimately it was too inefficient to continue.  It was, however, very satisfying to pop the little grains out of their husks!  The kids stayed entertained for a good 15 minutes....

I loaded a bunch of heavy, irregularly shaped objects in the barrel to try to thresh.

The beating was then accomplished by rolling the assembly down the hill.  The results, however, were poor.  Only about 10% or fewer of the grains were released by this method.

So, following a similar idea I found online I loaded the heads into the food processor with the plastic blade.  The results of that process are shown as they accumulate batch by batch in the bowl on the left.

Winnowing is the fun part, in my opinion.  We poured the grains and debris through the air stream produced by a box fan to blow off the chaff leaving only the grain (and a few sticks) behind.  The result was a lovely combination of sizes and colors, and smelled like grass and wheat at the same time.

If you don't have wind, make some.  Pouring the grain back and forth separated the wheat and chaff fairly well after only 5 or 6 passes.

The overall size is about the same, though the wild wheat is a bit thinner.  The color variation is amazing, though!  The final yield for the batch was just over one cup of grains.

We ground the wheat in our normal Mill-N-Mix grinder, and the resulting flour was doubled in volume from the wheat we started out with.  It was a grayer/whiter hue than the whole wheat flour we buy commercially or grind from commercial wheat, and it had a slightly tangy taste to it.  I blended the wild wheat flour with a little bit of store bought white flour to make sure it would rise, and I made my usual honey-wheat bread from flour, water, honey, and a bit of salt (using commercial, freeze-dried yeast).  It was awesome!

The 1 1/8 cup of grains produced over 2 cups of flour.  That's a higher volume increase than the commercial wheat, presumably because the original grain packing ratio is higher due to the smaller diameter grains.

Not only did it turn out as pretty as any other bread I make, but the taste and texture were phenomenal!