Gluten-Free & Sorghum Notes: Two-week evaluation

In a pair of trials conducted two weeks ago, competing gluten-free flour replacers were evaluated. As noted here, and as many other GF experimenters and home bakers have discovered, GF baking-mix adaptations generally have problems approaching form, function, and palatability of wheat flour-based traditional recipes.

Trial 010B bake of 2013-02-25:
Namaste GF flour blend. Ingredients list from namastefoods.com:

• Sweet brown rice flour
• Tapioca flour
• Arrowroot flour
• Sorghum flour
• Xanthan gum

11 March 2013 14-day sampling: Cake is still moist, but crumb has become crumbly in the mouth, and there is definitely a slight bitterness or biting undertone that makes it a displeasure to eat. The remaining 010B shelf-life cakes have been tossed into the compost bin!

Trial 010A bake of 2013-02-25:
Beth’s All-Purpose GF Baking Flour. Ingredients list from glutino.com:

• White rice flour
• Potato starch
• Tapioca starch
• Guar gum
• Salt

11 March 2013 14-day sampling: Cake is still moist, harder than initially but still okay. Aroma and flavor good.

So what is all this Sorghum stuff, anyhow?

A common formula for sorghum-based GF cake flour replacer goes as follows, by percent weight, not volume. Note that this is for reference only!

I do not recommend baking with or eating this stuff:

• 62.4% Sorghum flour
• 29.4% Potato starch
•  6.8% Tapioca flour
•  1.4% Xanthan gum powder

Sorghum is a seed crop that was introduced to the New World in the 18th Century—generally presumed to have shadowed the traffic in African slaves. It is a drought-tolerant crop used for animal feed and by poverty-stricken folk who, due to hostile climate, poor soils, and long tradition, have nothing better to feed their beasts or themselves.

Sorghum has been increasingly-heavily promoted in the West as the latest wonder-grain for the gluten-intolerant, despite its relative indigestibility and significant issues with toxins (see this & this); ironically, cooking or fermenting sorghum only makes it less digestible and more toxic. In a 1984 study, male rats fed fermented sorghum meal developed anorexia, alopecia (hair loss), blood disorders, and testicular hypoplasia leading to sterility.

Maybe breeding and processing of sorghum have improved on this of late, but it is not hard to imagine that the aforementioned problems are merely being swept under the rug in the headlong ru$h to promote a politically-correct foodstuff that is bound to unwittingly create more health problems for world populations.

As for gluten-free NOT-winkies, there shall be no sorghum content, ever. IMO this crop cr@p lies firmly in the non-food category.

Beekeeping for Poets

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