Sakadane Country Bread

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.

I would say the results are inconclusive at best. I say "rice only" but it used the koji rice + cooked rice starter as the... well, starter. The sakadane fed on only rice was definitely active, but not as active as the one with koji rice. My best guess is that the koji saccharifies the rice which gives the yeast more food more quickly, while the yeast with only cooked rice has to work harder for its food.

I think I'll need to keep the rice-only starter going to see if there's any point where the yeast just die off, but I'm not sure I want to continue haha.

Anyway, I also made two loaves of bread with the KA Country Bread recipe. I used only white AP flour again. It's such a forgiving recipe and doesn't have anything to interfere with comparing the starters.

I made the doughs in the early afternoon, and by the time I was getting ready to go to bed, the koji rice dough was ready for shaping. The rice-only dough had pretty much nothing going on. So I shaped one loaf and then went to bed, resigned to the fact that I'd have to throw out some dough the next morning.

Anyway, ended up waking up to this:

This tripled in size lol. So y'know, definitely over proofed.

I shaped it and tossed it into the fridge until I was ready to bake, since it wasn't going to be right then haha.

This one is the rice-only loaf that overproofed. It was pretty sour, but not an unpleasant flavour. You can see how it was more difficult to shape, but overall I'd say it's not that bad. Definitely have made worse breads!

We had it with a creamy pork stew for dinner one night.

The header image is the koji rice loaf. As you can see, there's not much difference (thanks, forgiving breads!) but it does have bigger holes and better shaping. The flavour in it is much milder though. I would say that you can barely even tell it's a wild yeast. I can see why sakadane was used for mild sweet anpan in Japan! As someone who's not a fan of sour breads, I much preferred this one.

Anyway, I had a slice of that today with a poached egg and some chilli oil, which is why I thought I'd write a post about it.