Brown Sauce Texture

[paulraphael]

Considering it won't work at low concentrations like gums, and has a significant flavor of its own, inulin seems to have few benefits and a lot of detractions.

Like I said before, I will use arrowroot for certain dishes, but when I turn to roux for classic sauces, I do so because I prefer it's toasty, slightly less processed flavor.

I've never detected any flavor at all from arrowroot. I'd be curious to know if anyone could distinguish it in a blind test. One of the reasons I like it more than cornstarch is its fundamental blandness.

Lastly, I've thought about it a little more, and one more thickener comes to mind. Apparently when you combine different hydrocolloids, the end result is a thickener that's not quite so slimy as xanthan is by itself. I use xanthan and guar, but I hear acacia really works wonders. If you're budget allows it, this seems to get good reviews:

http://www.expertfoods.com/package_notStarch.php

that's another one I haven't read anything about. I'll check out that article, thanks.

In the end I think what I'm trying to do is pretty conventional. Considering the outrageous range of textures available with easily found starches and gums and other thickeners, there should be little reason to bound off in search of exotic solutions. Doesn't this seem like a reasonable assumption?

[Shalmanese]

I feel like surely there's some industrial food research lab somewhere which has done this research and you may be able to piggyback off their work. Have you tried walking around some of the more processed isles of the supermarket and reading labels?

[paulraphael]

I have looked at the industrial approaches. The trouble is that their goals and constraints are different. For example, in the interests of economy, they often take advantage of superaditive effects of different gums. This is the phenomenon by which a combination of two gums will have an effect that's greater than the sum of the individual effects. Great for them, when they're manufacturing by the ton, but annoying for me, when it means I'll have to measure in hundredths of a gram instead of tenths.

The industrial guys also have use of their industrial mixing and manufacturing methods. I'm looking for something that's easy to use spontaneously ... ideally like a slurry you can throw together and whisk into the sauce. Xanthan is harder to use than purified starches, but it's within the realm of reason.

[David A. Goldfarb]

The xanthan percentage solution we were discussing a while back turned out to work really well in terms of stability in the fridge and measurability. It lasted for months in a stoppered bottle in the refrigerator without molding or picking up off flavors, and it was way easier to measure ml of a 1% or 0.1% solution than hundredths of a gram of the granulated xanthan gum, but in the end I decided that I just didn't like the mouthfeel even in minuscule quantities, so I haven't maintained it.

[Shalmanese]

I have looked at the industrial approaches. The trouble is that their goals and constraints are different. For example, in the interests of economy, they often take advantage of superaditive effects of different gums. This is the phenomenon by which a combination of two gums will have an effect that's greater than the sum of the individual effects. Great for them, when they're manufacturing by the ton, but annoying for me, when it means I'll have to measure in hundredths of a gram instead of tenths.

The easiest way to get hundredth gram resolution is via severe dilution. Make a very weak syrup and then add a little of the syrup in.