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Cereals and bread from Benin

Gowégowé

Gowé is a sour-sweet paste of malted and unmalted cereal, usually red sorghum, from Benin. Wetted malt flour ferments first, so its enzymes turn starch to sugar; then part-cooked raw flour and hot water are mixed in and the mash ferments again for about a day. It is cooked, wrapped in leaves and diluted with water to drink.

Fully documentedCereals and bread36 h

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceProportions are the laboratory version of the traditional process in Vieira-Dalodé et al. 2015; households do not use fixed amounts.
Malted red sorghum flour25%Share of the flour blend[vieira2015]
Unmalted red sorghum flour75%Part used raw and part pasted (cooked) at 70–80 °C[vieira2015]
WaterTo wet the malt to 47% water, then hot water (50–60 °C) to bring the mash to 77% water[vieira2015]
No starterTraditional gowé ferments spontaneously, without inoculation[vieira2015]
Starterspontaneous

Total time across the recorded steps: 36 h

Start
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What changes: Part of the sorghum is sprouted, dried and milled into malt flour

Step 1 of 5
Malt part of the sorghum and mill it
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Yeasts

Output: malted sorghum flour.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Gowé is a sour-sweet paste of malted and unmalted cereal, usually red sorghum, from Benin. Wetted malt flour ferments first, so its enzymes turn starch to sugar; then part-cooked raw flour and hot water are mixed in and the mash ferments again for about a day. It is cooked, wrapped in leaves and diluted with water to drink. Made in 5 steps over 36 h. The longest step, ferment the mash, takes 24 h (Vieira-Dalodé G 2015). Lactic bacteria: Limosilactobacillus fermentum, Weissella confusa and Pediococcus acidilactici dominant; also L. mucosae, P. pentosaceus and W. kimchii and Yeasts: Kluyveromyces marxianus, Pichia anomala and Candida krusei dominant; also C. tropicalis do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step24 hReported[vieira2015]Ferment the mash
Temperature50–80 °CReported[vieira2015]Mix in raw and pasted unmalted flour with hot water

What makes this one different

Gowé blends malted and unmalted grain. The malt step makes it sweet before lactic bacteria sour it.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Accelerated-saccharification gowéAn experimental process holds the malt mash at 40 °C for 2 h instead of fermenting it for 12 h; it can be seeded with lactic bacteria and yeasts from natural gowé.

Safety

Gowé is cooked after fermentation and keeps only 3–4 days (Vieira-Dalodé et al. 2015). It is a wet paste wrapped in leaves.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Gowé is a traditional Beninese food. It was first popular in the centre of Benin, and by 2015 its consumption had spread to other regions, mainly the main cities (Adinsi et al. 2015).

  1. [vieira2007] Vieira-Dalodé G. et al. 2007, Lactic acid bacteria and yeasts associated with gowé production from sorghum in Bénin, Journal of Applied Microbiology 103:342–349, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2672.2006.03252.x (abstract)paper
  2. [vieira2015] Vieira-Dalodé G., Akissoé N., Hounhouigan D.J., Jakobsen M., Mestres C. 2015, Dextrin, sugar and organic acid profiles of spontaneous and modified gowé, a malted and fermented sorghum beverage from Benin, International Journal of Food Science and Technology 50:549–557, doi:10.1111/ijfs.12708paper
  3. [adinsi2015] Adinsi L., Akissoé N.H., Dalodé-Vieira G., Anihouvi V.B., Fliedel G., Mestres C., Hounhouigan J.D. 2015, Sensory evaluation and consumer acceptability of a beverage made from malted and fermented cereal: case of gowe from Benin, Food Science & Nutrition 3(1):1–9, doi:10.1002/fsn3.166paper