stellar's blog

I've been too busy to cook myself dinner recently, let alone do much baking, but managed to find some time over the past week!

I think something that's nice about sakadane is that it is quick to set up and maintain - less than a week to get a starter that's usable, you only need to feed it once a week, and it's usable right out of the fridge. The only downside is needing koji rice. But it just feels so forgiving (when used with white flour, anyway).

I am getting back on my sakadane experimenting! I built up a new starter with the koji rice that produces more amylase, and also did a mini experiment with trying to feed it only rice, instead of koji rice + cooked rice.

The first full work week of the year was pretty crazy for me, so instead of babying and (re-)starting my sakadane, I just made my usual sandwich loaf with some red fife flour that I have.

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: