Wheat and Flour

[Tomas]

I've been looking into the history of wheat and flour recently. It's fairly interesting, except that there is abundant information about the history of the two lesser used wheats from period (Durum and Spelt), but I can find almost nothing about the history of Common Wheat.

Durum Wheat seems to have originated in north eastern africa and became a major crop in the middle east and was spread throughout the Muslim world, making it to muslim controlled southern italy by the 13th century. Before then it was a major export to Europe.

So, from about the fifth century on Durum Wheat is perfectly period (mmm... conjecturaly correct pasta)

Spelt is a type of wheat which was the primary wheat for the early germanic peoples, and was later adopted by the romans, and was spread throughout their empire.

So if you are early period German, or Roman spelt is the grain for you. It seems to have also been the main staple of the Legions, and makes a prety good bacon pottage.

But what about Common Wheat? When did it replace spelt? Was it being grown at the same time as spelt? There seem to be many different variets of common wheat today, which ones were period in europe?