Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them

by Dan Saladino

One general rule is that the further north you travel in Europe, the flatter bread becomes. In places with plenty of sun and long hot summers it’s possible to grow cereals such as bread wheat, which have higher levels of the protein gluten. This chemical property adds so much elasticity to dough that, when baked, bubbles of trapped air can make it rise into a fluffy loaf. In colder northern climates, however, the lower levels of sunlight favour barley, rye and oats. These cereals have a different chemical structure and lower levels of gluten, and because of this, in the places where they’ve traditionally been grown, instead of loaves, you find flatbreads.