1. NEWS 498 Karoline Kastanek
Feature #1 – Sorghum Bread, Final Draft, READY TO EDIT April 28, 2010
LOCATED IN BFC
Move over wheat, bread has new flour - sorghum
Bruce Hamaker makes the most of his time…even if that means sitting down in an airport
for a good long phone chat about the very reason he’s in the airport: work. On his way to Mali in
late February, Hamaker did just that.
Hamaker, a food science professor at Purdue University and director of the Whistler
Center for Carbohydrate Research, studies carbohydrates. In addition, Hamaker serves as
INTSORMIL’s U.S. Coordinator of the West Africa Regional Program.
Hamaker studies bread characteristics and consumption trends in West Africa for
INTSORMIL. Although he claims he is not a prize-winning bread maker, he is perfecting a
bread recipe. Hamaker’s bread recipe is unique compared to most bread. It calls for sorghum
flour.
His current INTSORMIL research focuses on increasing the almost non-existent demand
for West African-grown sorghum. Although sorghum is an easy crop for farmers to grow in West
Africa’s climate, especially in comparison to wheat, it has a barely-there market in Africa
because of consumer preferences.
Hamaker researches ways to substitute sorghum for wheat in foods like couscous and
bread. His overall goal is to create a demand for sorghum in the food products industry for
farmers. Bread is an expensive food in Africa because Africa imports most of its wheat Hamaker
said. Farmers in West Africa need a profitable crop that will bump their production up from
being self-sustaining farmers to commercial, large-scale crop growers. Hamaker’s primary goal

2. in his sorghum bread research is to benefit African sorghum producers. Hamaker said he can
achieve this goal by creating a sorghum bread that tastes and looks similar to the standard wheat
bread out on the market that appeals to the West African consumer. Hamaker’s work also fulfills
some of INTSORMIL’s top objectives: To improve the nutritional quality and taste of sorghum
and millet and to increase the opportunity for farmers to sell sorghum and pearl millet
domestically.
Taste is on the tongue of the beholder. Bread consumption varies in countries and even
whole regions of Africa. Hamaker said bread is eaten by urban dwellers rather than rural village
people. Urban people have a higher income than villagers and can afford to buy bread. The high
price of wheat and the additional cost of importing wheat drive up the cost of bread.
Bread is not a traditional food in Africa. Its origins date back to when England and
France occupied colonies on the continent, thus, people from different regions of Africa have
different preferences. For example, France occupied the Niger, so, the bread served in this
country may resemble a French baguette. In the countries formerly occupied by England, the
bread may have a fluffy texture and taste similar to the bread eaten in England or the United
States.
As Hamaker tries to increase the demand for sorghum in Africa, his bread needs to taste,
look and feel just like its competitor, wheat bread. A few similarities between sorghum and
wheat do exist. Africans have storage problems with both sorghum and wheat. “They can’t use
whole wheat flour because it doesn’t have good shelf life in the hot humidity,” said Hamaker.
Sorghum shares in this same problem, Hamaker said, because much like wheat, it has a bran
layer. This hard, nutritional outer layer must be removed during the milling process.

3. Sorghum flour and wheat flour do have different bread-making properties though. Wheat
bread is often light and airy in texture. Gluten protein gives wheat flour the ability to make light,
airy bread.
When wheat flour is mixed with yeast and water, the gluten protein in the flour gives the
dough a viscoelastic structure or a stretchy composition. “It is this elastic gluten framework
which stretches to contain the expanding leavening gases during rising,” Nebraska Extension
Assistant Sharon Lauterbach and Extension Food Specialist Julie Albrecht said. These leavening
gases or gases created from combining yeast, flour and water, make small air pockets in wheat
bread giving it a porous look after it is baked. Sorghum lacks this essential ingredient in making
bread.
Instead of gluten, sorghum has weaker proteins called analogous proteins. When these
proteins interact with wet yeast, the proteins cannot create a viscoelastic structure stable enough
to give the dough stretchiness. Instead, the dough becomes a sticky pile of glop that when baked,
becomes a dense crumbly cake-like substance.
In attempt to lower the cost of making bread, and more so to boost the sorghum market
for domestic producers in Africa, Hamaker is working to develop a bread that has as much
sorghum as possible. Sorghum bread currently has a blend of sorghum and wheat flour. When
scientists first used conventional sorghum flour, only 15 percent of the flour used could be
sorghum and other the 85 percent of the flour had to be wheat flour. Scientists found that this
ratio of flours would make a “good quality” bread. As a result of Hamaker’s research, the ratio of
flours has changed.
The sorghum bread that Hamaker is producing is a made from a close relative of the
Purdue University-produced variety, Sorghum P721 Opaque. This variety of sorghum contains a

4. stronger protein compared to the conventional sorghum. It allows dough to have some
viscoelastic structure but not enough to use 100 percent sorghum flour. Hamaker can now use a
50:50 ratio of the new sorghum flour and wheat flour.
“Imagine if you could replace half of the wheat flour used to make bread with sorghum
flour…,” Hamaker said.
Half of the cost of bread flour could be returned to the African farmers. According to the
U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agriculture Service, Africa consumed 69,950 metric
tons of wheat in 2009. On a large-scale market, those small changes to a recipe can mean
changes in varieties of sorghum for farmers and big changes in demand for sorghum.
As with most all food products, research and development take time. And this project is
no exception.
“Like everything, if you’re trying to change a grain or make a hybrid…it takes time,”
Hamaker said.
In fact, putting sorghum bread onto the market is more complex than most food products.
There are more people to train in this process. “Farmers have to adopt it (new sorghum variety)
and they have to have a good reason for do it,” Hamaker said. INTSORMIL scientists must also
teach millers what type of texture the new sorghum flour should have for good baking qualities.
And finally, the scientists must teach bakers how to develop a quality product using the proper
sorghum/wheat flour ratio.
Changing a raw food product at its most basic level, the seed, is one of the reasons
Haymaker says that INTSORMIL’s influences on Africa’s agriculture in the past 30 years has
been slow. “Things tend to move slowly, but with persistence you see changes,” Hamaker said.

5. When Hamaker joined the INTSORMIL team in 1992, the food laboratories he started
working with were researching breeding techniques. These laboratories conducted tests on
varieties of sorghum to examine the fat and protein content. Today, these same laboratories are
trying to bring the new changes of sorghum production and flour processing to farming
cooperatives and millers.
Hamaker isn’t quite ready to pitch this new sorghum bread to Africa. He is collaborating
with the Food Institute of Technology in Senegal to do sensory tests – taste tests in market places
around West Africa. If the sensory tests prove that consumers in Africa are willing to buy
sorghum bread, scientists will start teaching bakers, millers and farmers how to process and
produce this new form of sorghum. Until then, Hamaker will continue to perfect his sorghum
bread recipe.