My father published somewhere around two hundred papers on grain. Not one of them was written for a marketing department. He was interested in what a kernel is made of, how it behaves under a stone, what happens to starch when you heat it and what happens to flavour when you don't.
Sorghum turned up in that work long before it turned up in a trend report. It was interesting because it was tough — a cereal that gets on with life on a fraction of the water wheat demands, in soils that would embarrass a wheat farmer. It was interesting because it's naturally gluten-free without being a starch. And it was interesting because, milled properly, it tastes of something.
That's the grain sitting at the heart of the Bake-Free Home-made sorghum bread flour mixture 900g. Here's what it does, how to work with it, and where it will let you down if you expect it to be wheat in disguise.
What sorghum actually is
Sorghum is an ancient cereal — one of the oldest cultivated grains still in daily use, feeding enormous parts of the world long before anyone in Europe found it photogenic. It's a whole grain, not a refined white powder. When we mill it, we're milling the kernel, not a fraction of it.
The practical difference between sorghum and the usual gluten-free suspects is substance. Corn starch and rice flour are excellent at being invisible: they bulk, they lighten, they contribute almost nothing in return. Sorghum contributes. It carries flavour, it carries colour, and it carries the body of a real grain into a loaf that would otherwise be held together by hope and air.
What it does to crumb, crust and flavour
Crumb. Sorghum gives a close, soft, even crumb — the kind you can butter without it tearing. It won't give you the cavernous holes of a wheat sourdough (nothing gluten-free will, honestly), but it gives you a slice with structure rather than a slice that collapses under jam.
Crust colour. This is the one that surprises people. Sorghum browns readily. You'll get a deeper, warmer crust sooner than you expect, which is lovely to look at and means you should keep one eye on the oven rather than trusting a timer you've used for wheat loaves.
Flavour. Mild, faintly sweet, a little nutty, with none of the chalky aftertaste that made a generation of people give up on free-from bread entirely. It's a grain flavour, not a filler flavour. Toast it and it comes forward.
Reading you the label
We're not making claims here. We're telling you how it's made.
- Milled in our own dedicated gluten-free mill. Not a shared line with a cleaning protocol. A mill that only ever sees gluten-free grain.
- Sieved to 160 microns. That's wheat-flour fineness. It matters more than it sounds: coarse gluten-free flour is why so many home loaves come out gritty. Fineness is texture.
- No corn starch or rice fillers. The grain is doing the work, not standing behind a starch that's doing it for them.
- Psyllium husk as the binder. Without gluten you need something to hold water and build a network. Psyllium does that job honestly — it's a fibre, not a gum invented in a lab.
- 900g. A working bag. Enough to get past the first nervous loaf and into the ones you actually enjoy making.
Our family has been milling in Endréd for over a hundred years. The reason sorghum was in our mill before the headlines is simply that we were already reading the papers.
What it won't do
It won't behave like wheat. We're not going to pretend otherwise.
There's no gluten network, so there's no windowpane test, no long knead, no satisfying elastic pull. The dough will be wetter than you think is right — closer to a thick batter than a ball — and that's correct. Resist the urge to add flour until it looks like bread dough. If it looks like bread dough, it's too dry, and you'll bake a brick.
It also won't forgive a long, ambitious prove. Gluten-free structure doesn't have the tensile strength to hold a big rise for long; over-prove it and it will sink in the oven. One controlled rise, then bake.
How to get a good loaf out of it
- Use a tin. The dough needs sides to climb. Free-form loaves spread.
- Mix properly. Where you'd knead wheat, you beat this — a couple of minutes of energetic mixing hydrates the psyllium and builds what structure there is.
- Let it hydrate. A short rest before proving lets the flour drink. The dough firms up on its own.
- Bake it through. Gluten-free loaves are routinely underbaked. Go longer than feels comfortable; the centre should be properly set, and a thermometer is your friend.
- Cool it completely. This is the rule people break most. The crumb finishes setting as it cools. Slice it hot and you'll get gumminess that has nothing to do with the flour and everything to do with impatience.
- Slice and freeze. It toasts beautifully straight from frozen, which is how most of us actually eat bread on a Tuesday.
Who it's for
Anyone who's been quietly disappointed by gluten-free bread and assumed that was simply the deal. Coeliacs who want a loaf at the table that nobody has to be polite about. And honestly — anyone who likes baking with a grain that has something to say. Gluten-free for everyone, not just for those who have to be.
Sorghum was worth knowing about decades before it was fashionable. It still is. Find the Bake-Free Home-made sorghum bread flour mixture 900g at millandfolks.com, and give the first loaf the benefit of the doubt — the second one is always better.
— Miklos
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Miklos Founder & CEO, Mill & Folks |
