Farro anyone?

but have never ordered anything:

Mini Oven

I've ordered it from Market Hall Foods (http://www.markethallfoods.com/index.php?main_page=product_mh_info&cPath=11_28&products_id=92)

The quality is good but its about $8/lb which I think is highway robbery.  They have a funny way of calculating shipping and I ended up ordering 3 packs of farro and one of polenta to get the shipping per pack to be reasonable (or some combination like that).  I tried to get some from a local restaurant and they were quite nice about it but were offering to sell me a pound and they were really busy so I figured it wasn't worth it.

I'd love to find an affordable source though. 

I bought Farro in small quantities from a local health food market last year, but the company name eludes me. It was quite pricey for a small bag.

However I do know The Passionate Gourmet does carry it in various forms. See the "order form" link on the left side of the page. I think I saw it on Amazon once too. I just found this link to a farm in Washington state that grows organic emmer, I must follow up with them myself!

The Purcell farms site mistakenly labels Farro as Spelt, a common error unfortunately. While Spelt is in the same family of grains: Einkorn, Emmer (Farro), Spelt, and Kamut, it is different in taste from Farro.

Now I've seen Farro on Italian food supplier sites, mostly wholesale, I've yet to see anything more than 2-5 pound bags.

Organic food shop, but at €5 a kilo for complete berries...???   That makes an expensive loaf.  Grown locally, interesting.  They also sell a Einkorn/rye loaf.   

Mini O

I think farro is more a culinary term than a botanical term and as such the meaning is not universally agreed upon. In Italy all 3 of the covered wheats may be referred to as farro, though emmer is by far the most common (depending what part of Italy you are in your may get different opinions about what "real" farro is). Sometimes the three are distingished as farro grande (spelt), farro medio (emmer) and farro piccolo (einkorn).

So yes, sometimes what you see sold as farro may be spelt, but that does not necessarily make it incorrect.

Eric

Yes, there's a big mess concerning farro here, as I wrote in another thread. Most of the times sellers don't even specify what they are sellling. What is sure is that if you buy it in grain 99% of the times it's emmer because spelt is not cultivated in Italy (or not in a significant amount); einkorn is nowhere to be found.

We've only recently started using "Farro" here during our bread workshops, because we were given some by an Italian participant.  As you can see from the label on the left, translating the name causes problems.  All I can say is that the grains are not the size or color of what we can get here as spelt.  When cooked in, say, a rissoto, the flavor is much nuttier that spelt.  Not much help here, I guess, but I am curious about the origin and definition of this grain.

CJ

it looks just like the emmer/dicocco I have at home.