September 6, 2016 - 7:44am
gluten free bread with sorghum has very sharp after taste. Why?
I have recently made several loaves with varying amounts of sorghum. All had a significant sharp aftertaste. I have read online that it has a taste that closely mimics wheat bread. This was really disappointing. The bread loaves were all so bad that we had to throw them. This is too expensive to keep on experimenting with. I used Bobs Red Mill. I have changed now to trying millet only to see if that would make a difference. This bread was not sharp, but still has a sort of metalic aftertaste. Can anyone help me understand this?
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I found the same problem. I bought flour that was recently stocked and the freshness date was months into the future (should have been fresh) but it had a very bitter aftertaste- both the flour and the bread. I called Bob's Red Mill and they sent me fresh milled flour and I had the same issue. I found the same to b true of millet flour.
I don't understand because I have read all those raving revues, also, about how neutral sorghum flour is and how millet can add sweetness. I wonder if it is hit-or-miss depending on how the seed was handled before it was milled. I have since moved on because, as you said, it is too expensive to keep experimenting and get these inconsistent results.
didn't reveal any flavor like you have experienced. One thought is that the flour, even from a freshly-opened package, may have staled before it got to your kitchen. Another possibility is that the dough spent some time in a metal container that was reactive enough for the dough to absorb some metal flavors. Or...
Paul
http://www.sorghumcheckoff.com/market-opportunities/consumer-food
Q & A #3
I have since discovered that I need to be sure that all ingredients are fresh. Sorghum, in fact, does have a rather sharp, bitter taste, even when fresh and that to mask that, other ingredients' taste needs to be neutral plus you need to add sugar, or maybe if you already have, increase the amount of sugar. One of my biggest discoveries was that sorghum flour should not constitute more than 15-20% of the flour total. Staying with 15% really helped my problem. Obviously, it does not work for all to use it as the main flour ingredient in a recipe like some I have seen.
I use the Carol Fenster [1,000 Gluten Free Recipes] sorghum mix all the time for "everything" and I can't taste the sorghum bitterness in there. [But different people taste different things -- to me the typical brown rice flour mixes have a strong bitter green grassy flavor.]
By volume:
35% sorghum
35% potato starch
30% tapioca flour
By weight:
130 g sorghum flour
175 g potato starch
83 g tapioca flour
By weighed-percentages:
33% sorghum
45% potato starch
22% tapioca flour