Durum flour substitute

This article is about the cultivar of wheat. Durum flour substitute 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 secca, 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.