Sakadane Stone Milled Bread

I recently bought some stone milled flour from a local mill and also came back from a trip to Japan where I visited a few sake breweries, which renewed my interest in sakadane (a starter made from koji rice, which is also sometimes called malted rice). So I thought, why not combine the two all at once? That was not the brightest idea I've ever had, but here we are lol.

As mentioned in my intro post, I finally managed to sort it all out and just need to fine tune the things.

To start, this was attempt #1:

No rise to speak of, and I didn't even bother with an interior shot because it was so dense.

After this, I decided to make mini-loaves in my toaster oven instead of full sized ones since I anticipated many failures (and also conveniently found a sakadane country bread recipe that was small enough for my toaster oven).

The main issues were:

• dough would turn into sloppy, unstructured goop after bulk ferment
• dough rose extremely quickly but had zero oven spring

After doing a bunch of searching, I figured out that there were multiple things contributing to my problems:

• my sakadane used miso/soy sauce koji rice, which is tuned for protease production
• the stone milled flour that I bought was freshly milled and (mostly) whole wheat
• flour was also only 11% protein

I ended up making a bunch of modifications after all my testing and failing:

• bought new koji rice - this one is "all purpose" for sake and shiokoji making, and it supposedly produces amylase and protease evenly (the amazake koji rice was out of stock, but that produces more amylase)
• less ferment and proofing time - definitely no overnight ferments, either at room temp or in the fridge
• less time between stretch & folds
• no autolyse
• added vital wheat gluten as a buffer against the protease eating all my gluten, not sure if I will keep it in the future
• added diastatic malt powder also as a "just in case" but will likely remove it going forward
• added ascorbic acid for the same reasons above, will probably remove
• slightly reduced hydration, but I can probably increase it again

Most of the above changes were made because my dough fermented crazy fast. The sakadane worked so quickly that it would overproof in the blink of an eye. The initial dough soup was probably a combination of overproofing, too many proteases (from both the sakadane and the flour), and the low protein content. With these changes, I actually had a dough that felt like "real" bread dough that I could shape, instead of the sticky unworkable mess that I had started with.

And the successful experiment (bottom loaf) along with two experiments:

The top is a little burnt since it's way too close to the top element in my toaster oven and I didn't cover it early enough. But it turned out great, especially when you look at it next to the failures! I managed to get it to a good flavour and crumb, so I'm happy with how it turned out.

There's definitely some refinement to be done, though, like removing some of those potentially unnecessary additions. I also managed to get the amazake koji rice today, so I'll probably make a new sakadane. I also want to swap to this mill's bread flour or their red fife flour.

Here's the recipe that got me an edible loaf (adapted loosely from this YouTube recipe):

Ingredients:

• 250g flour (1847 "Daily Grind")
• 150g water
• 5g salt
• 30g sakadane (estimated 75% hydration)
• 0.25g ascorbic acid
• 0.5g diastatic malt powder
• 10g vital wheat gluten

Steps:

1. Mix everything together and rest 15 min
2. Stretch and fold every 15 min, 4-5 times (with wet hands - probably added a fair bit of water at this step because I wasn't particularly careful about how much water I had, plus it's a very small loaf)
3. Shape and proof in a bowl seam side up for 30-45 min - will not look like it's doubled, but should pass the poke test
4. Bake at 500F for 15 min, covered loosely with aluminum foil with a few ice cubes for steam
5. Remove foil (and any residual water/steam) and bake for another 10 min, covering with foil if it gets too brown

Also, here is an experiment on a commercial white flour sakadane loaf, which I used to test that my sakadane was actually working. I wasn't too concerned because it was bubbling vigorously, but y'know, always good to test things. And it was the experiment that showed me the sakadane was going super quickly!

This was a full sized loaf from this KA pain de campagne recipe - followed it exactly except I halved it for one loaf, and also did not use any whole wheat flour, only the white flour I always use. Actually attempt #1 was this recipe as well, with all of the stone milled flour.

It was definitely very overproofed by the time I was supposed to shape it - it was way more than doubled. But I could shape it at least! It didn't turn into soup!

I struggled to get it into my Dutch oven (my condo fire alarm is very sensitive so I had to go and get it to stop yelling at me in between pulling the Dutch oven out and getting the dough into it) so I think it probably deflated a little bit, since I had to toss it back onto my counter in a rush. But it still turned out great! Wonderful "sour" flavour, actually, and it was very tender. I probably could have baked it for another 5 minutes to get a darker and thicker crust.

I used this as the "crouton" for French onion soup the other night and it was great.

I'm going to play around with sakadane a bit more - perhaps with my sandwich loaf next, but I'm just so happy I finally got it to work! I can see myself doing a sakadane panettone next Christmas, since it would add a Japanese touch to the yuzu and ginger flavour that I made this year.