the.com/buckwheat
a fruit seed pretending to be a grain that never met wheat
means A plant whose triangular seeds are ground into flour and eaten like a grain, though it's botanically unrelated to wheat — a pseudocereal cousin of rhubarb and sorrel.
from From Middle Dutch 'boecweite' or a parallel Germanic form, meaning roughly 'beech-wheat' — 'beech' because the little three-sided seeds resemble beechnuts, and 'wheat' because people ground and baked them as if they were. English absorbed it as 'buckwheat,' with 'buck' a worn-down echo of that old 'beech' (compare German 'Buche,' beech tree). So the name confesses both its lies: not a beechnut, not a wheat, just a seed that reminded folks of both.
- not wheat
- Related to rhubarb and sorrel, totally gluten-free
- bee fuel
- Flowers make dark, malty, almost smoky honey
- fast grower
- Matures in weeks, smothering weeds as cover crop
- japanese staple
- Soba noodles are spun from its flour
- cold tough
- Thrives in poor soil where other crops quit
tartine bakery sourdough — san francisco bakery uses buckwheat in their famous sourdough bread since the 1990s
japan soba noodles — buckwheat (soba) noodles are a foundational japanese cuisine staple for over 400 years