Anson Mills sobakoh is a blend of very, very finely milled buckwheat flour and the highest quality pasta flour we make, Farina di Maccheroni 00. Created in the Japanese ni-hachi style (in which buckwheat flour is strengthened by the addition of wheat flour to make soba noodles), this flour was developed after extensive research and much thought about the art and traditions behind the making of the Japanese 100 percent buckwheat flour noodles known as soba. Needless to say, the remarkable quality of fresh soba cannot be represented by machine-made dry soba noodles available here in America—and few soba masters perform their art here. Our challenge in developing sobakoh was to create a product that would not require the formidable talent and technique of a master. With Anson Mills Ni-Hachi Sobakoh you can produce remarkable soba easily. Visit Japan without leaving your own kitchen.

Anson Mills grows many types of buckwheat, but this large-groat Japanese heirloom variety—planted at our Carolina mountain farms in late summer and harvested as new-crop seeds after the first killing frost of late autumn—is the best. We preserve the mineral, green tea, and earthy flavor and aroma of this lovely food (it is not a grain) in freezers year-round, and mill it cold to a rustic light violet, with bits of crisp black hull for a subtly crystalline texture and the famous “whiplash” trace of bitterness. A tiny percentage of our buckwheat is toasted and mixed back in, redoubling its flavor. Use boldly in blini, crêpes, cookies, pasta. and polenta.