Heirloom Wheat Varieties: Emmer, Einkorn, Spelt & White Sonora Explained

This article was originally written by Beth Buck in 2016. It has been completely rewritten and updated by Lisa Bedford with new information and comparisons with modern-day wheat, September 2026.

Wheat is a staple in nearly every food storage pantry, and for good reason. It stores well for decades, works in almost anything you’d bake, and gives you lots of flexibility when it’s time to cook. Most people default to modern hard white or red wheat, but a growing number are looking further back, to heirloom varieties like emmer, einkorn, and spelt that have barely changed in thousands of years.

I get asked often whether these older varieties can simply replace modern wheat in a food storage plan. My honest answer is that modern wheat was bred for good reasons, and it will usually out-bake an heirloom variety unless you know exactly what each one is suited for. But heirloom wheat is still worthy of using and stocking up on for its own set of strengths. Here’s what each variety actually offers.

What exactly is heirloom wheat?

“Heirloom” wheat generally means any variety other than Triticum aestivum, the species behind most wheat grown in the United States today. There’s one exception — White Sonora, which is technically an unimproved cultivar of T. aestivum, but seed companies like Baker Creek still classify it as heirloom because of its age and history.

Humans have grown wheat on purpose since around 5,000 BC, though the wheat found in Egyptian pyramids isn’t the same wheat used in the bread you buy today. Modern wheat has been selectively bred for higher protein, greater drought tolerance, and other traits that make it more productive and easier to work with.

Heirloom varieties, by contrast, have barely changed. Emmer wheat grown today is nearly identical to samples recovered from Middle Eastern archaeological digs thousands of years old.

Emmer

Emmer earned the nickname “Pharaoh’s Wheat” because it was the staple grain of ancient Egypt. Archaeologists have recovered emmer spikelets from Fifth Dynasty tombs, and genetic analysis of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian emmer sample confirms it’s a distinct, more primitive grain than the Triticum aestivum grown now.

Beyond the history, emmer holds up on its own merits. It’s higher in fiber than modern wheat, resists disease well, and grows in nutrient-poor soil where other grains struggle to thrive. It works for bread and beer, though it makes notably poor pasta.

Some people with gluten sensitivities report they can tolerate emmer better than modern wheat, though the science on this remains disputed, so don’t treat it as a guaranteed substitute if you have celiac disease or a diagnosed gluten intolerance.

Seeds are available from Baker Creek Seeds if you want to grow your own.

Einkorn

Einkorn is the oldest of all cultivated wheat varieties, dating back over 10,000 years, and it’s never been hybridized like every other variety on this list. These two points are important because it’s naturally lower in gluten than modern wheat, and some people who can’t tolerate modern wheat find that einkorn is easier to tolerate. This isn’t the same as being gluten-free, though, and it’s not safe for anyone with celiac disease.

The tradeoff is baking performance. Einkorn’s lower gluten content means its flour won’t rise the way bread wheat does, so it’s better suited to bulgur or whole-grain porridge than a loaf of sandwich bread. What it lacks in rise, it makes up for in nutrition. Einkorn runs higher in protein than modern red wheat, plus it has a solid dose of potassium and phosphorus.

For food storage purposes, einkorn is worth including in your pantry but not as a wholesale replacement for your baseline wheat supply, since its baking limitations mean it won’t cover the same range of meals modern wheat does. Treat it as a specialty addition to your pantry, not your primary grain. It’s become easier to find in recent years; whole einkorn berries and einkorn flour are both available from mainstream retailers now, not just specialty seed companies.

Spelt

Spelt is lower in gluten than modern wheat, but high enough to still work for baking, unlike einkorn. That makes it the most bread-friendly heirloom variety on this list if you’re looking for something closer to a direct substitute in a recipe. Beyond baking, spelt is often cooked whole as farro and added to soups and salads. The word, “farro” describes how a grain is cooked and served, not a specific variety, so emmer and einkorn are sometimes labeled farro, too.

If you’re looking to grow an ancient varietry of wheat, spelt has the advantage of requiring less fertilizer than modern wheat, which is part of why organic farmers favor it.

For food storage, spelt is the heirloom variety most able to replace a portion of your modern wheat supply, since it bakes closer to what you’re used to. It still won’t perform identically, so test it in your own recipes before committing a large portion of your pantry to it.

White Sonora

White Sonora has an interesting history when the Spanish Jesuit missionary, Padre Eusebio Kino, introduced the wheat to the Pima people around 1685, making it the first wheat variety grown anywhere in the western hemisphere. Technically, it’s an unimproved cultivar of Triticum aestivum, the same species as modern wheat, rather than a separate ancient species like emmer or einkorn, but its age and heritage status are what qualifies it to be on this list.

Where White Sonora stands out in comparison with the other ancient wheat varieties is its dough. It’s soft and low in protein, compared to bread wheat, which produces a stretchy, pliable dough excellent for making flour tortillas specifically. It’s better suited to making tortillas than a standard loaf of bread.

Seeds are available from Baker Creek Seeds if you want to grow it yourself.

Khorasan (Kamut)

Khorasan wheat, sold commercially under the trademarked name Kamut, is another ancient variety that is growing in popularity. It’s higher in protein and several minerals than modern wheat, has a rich, buttery flavor, and produces a nice loaf of bread, although denser than modern wheat. It’s available in natural food stores and online, more so than emmer or einkorn, making it one of the easier heirloom varieties to actually try.

Variety	Gluten level	Best for	Growing notes	Origin
Emmer	Moderate	Bread, beer, porridge	Disease-resistant, tolerates poor soil	Ancient Egypt, ~5000 BC
Einkorn	Low, doesn’t rise	Bulgur, whole-grain porridge	Higher protein, potassium, phosphorous	One of the earliest cultivated grains
Spelt	Moderate, bakeable	Bread, farro, soups, salads	Needs less fertilizer than modern wheat	Ancient Europe
White Sonora	Moderate, stretchy dough	Flour tortillas	Unimproved cultivar, heirloom-classified	Brought to the Americas, 1600s
Khorasan (Kamut)	Moderate to high, bakeable	Bread (denser loaf), pasta, cereal	Higher protein and minerals than modern wheat	Ancient Middle East, sold under trademark
Modern wheat	High, best rise	Everyday bread, light crumb	Bred for higher yield and easier harvest	Selectively bred over the last century

Heirloom wheat vs. modern wheat

If heirloom wheat has so much going for it, why did modern wheat take over in the first place? The short answer is that farmers bred it that way on purpose, and it works.

Modern wheat grows shorter and produces a lot more grain per plant than older varieties did. It also holds onto its kernels better at harvest time, so less gets lost in the field. Put simply, modern wheat was shaped over the last century to grow more food, more reliably, on the same amount of land.

Baking is the other piece of it. Hard white wheat makes a lighter, softer loaf than red wheat, and both beat any heirloom variety when you’re just trying to bake a normal sandwich loaf. That trade-off shows up across every variety on this list. Emmer resists disease and grows well in poor soil but makes bad pasta, einkorn is more nutritious but won’t rise properly, spelt bakes decently but isn’t a perfect swap, and White Sonora makes great tortillas but isn’t built for bread.

For food storage, there’s a simple solution. Stock up on modern wheat as the bulk of your supply, since it’s the most reliable for most all types of baking. Add heirloom varieties in smaller amounts for what they specifically do well, easier growing, particular nutrition, or a specific use like tortillas, not as a full replacement for the wheat you already know how to cook with.

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The Final Word

There’s a reason modern wheat is used and stored by most people. It’s reliable, it bakes well, and it feeds more people per acre than anything that came before it. But that’s not a reason to ignore heirloom wheat. There are enough varieties of heirloom that experimenting with them is not only fun, it’s a way to find additional grains to use in everyday cooking as well as in your food storage pantry.