Where Can I Find – Red Fife Flour?

multipleflourThe “Where Can I Find?” column is a new bi-weekly feature here at TasteTO starting this week. We’ll research and track down hard to find items and let you know where they’re available. Got a question for the “Where Can I Find” lady? Drop us a line.

I see red fife flour showing up on restaurant menus that have a local food theme, but where can I get this product to bake with at home?

The hot ingredient this summer is most definitely red fife flour. Restaurateurs and bakers from Jamie Kennedy and Marc Thuet to St. John’s Bakery are using this wholly Canadian product, and articles about the history and near extinction of the grain are popping up in a variety of publications from MacLean’s and Toronto Life to Edible Toronto.

The short version – red fife wheat was first planted near Peterborough in 1842 by David and Jane Fife, and it became the backbone of the Canadian wheat industry, giving Canada the nickname “granary of the world”. Immigrants were given free seeds to encourage them to settle on the prairies and become farmers. Over the years, red fife fell out of favour as other varieties derived from the red fife strain became more popular because of shorter growing times and higher yields. The original strain was on the verge of extinction by 1988 when a seed-saver activist named Sharon Rempel got her hands on a pound of seed and planted it in Keremeos, British Columbia.

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Orgasmic Organics

multiplefruit

Multiple Organics
1545 Dundas Street West
647-435-5340

 

What are two well-educated young women to do when they find themselves with doctorates, but no where to use them? Why, open an organic food store of course!

 

Such was the case for Nupur Gogia and Carrianne Leung recently when they discovered that the only way to make use of their formal education was to leave Toronto, something neither of them wanted to do. Gogia was already part of an established family business, running the successful Raani Foods, and Leung wanted to stay close to her family in Toronto’s west end. With no retail background other than Gogia’s experience selling her famous samosas at St. Lawrence Market, the pair leased a storefront in the Dundas West and Dufferin area and opened Multiple Organics just over a month ago.

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