Triticum spelta
Spelt is a hulled wheat: the husk stays tightly attached after threshing and requires an extra dehulling step. It contains gluten and is not a wheat-free grain.
UMaine trials found meaningful differences among winter spelt varieties in height, lodging, yield, and protein. Maine farms have successfully grown winter spelt for both grain and straw.1
In the UMaine trial, later planting reduced yield but tended to raise grain protein. That tradeoff makes planting date part of the ingredient’s eventual composition, not merely a farm-calendar detail.1
Spelt belongs in the same genus as wheat and shares its gluten-forming proteins.
Its covered grain was once an advantage under marginal conditions but became a processing disadvantage beside free-threshing wheat. Spelt spread from the Middle East into Europe, remained important through Roman times, and persisted especially in parts of Germany and Switzerland after other wheats displaced it; it reached the United States in the 1890s.2
Footnotes
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University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Winter Spelt Variety and Planting Date Trial,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩ ↩2
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John Vaughan and Catherine Geissler, The New Oxford Book of Food Plants, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 4 (PDF p. 39). ↩