My first batch of light rye koji was dried and ready to use, so I boiled a kilo of french eco soybeans.
This time I’m using the rye koji made with Higuchi yellow barley tane koji. The next batch will be with the one from Gem Cultures.
I’m using the standard 2 year miso recipe.
At about this time last year I got the idea of trying rye for koji making. I had my grain farmer run the rye grains through the husking machine he uses for barley. It worked fine, so I made 3 batches of rye miso. The first one, a 6 month miso, was good and now long eaten up. The second, a 1 year miso is now open and it is great. It has a flavor of it’s own.
There is a 2 year miso too, to open next year.
In the mean time I must get busy and make more rye koji and rye miso.
It grew very well
I’ll make some with the other barley tane koji too – and a couple batches of 2 year rye miso.
Yesterday I was out at Stora Hällsta, the organic farm where I buy my barley and rye for koji making, as well as other farm products.
They have a full battery of milling machines, including a huller for hulling barley. When I order whole grains for koji making, I have them run through the huller i little extra, so that the koji mold grows better. That goes for the rye too, even tho it does’t need hulling.
It’s gone about 6 months since I made my first ever rye miso. One batch was a sweet miso – more rye koji, less salt and less time. I have opened it and tasted it.
And made a vegetable soup with it.
Nice color and smell. It was, of course, a bit weak because of the short fermentaion time, but very tasty. It had the sweet-sour flavor of a good sweet miso, and the umame effect was great. Ot will be interesting to see and taste the development of the 1 year and 2 year miso versions. When the time comes.
Now that I have some nice rye koji, I can do some experiments using it. First out is a 2 year rye miso using my standard recipe.
2 years will be a long time to wait, so next week I will have to make some express miso, so that I can get a good taste of it sooner.
The second batch of rye koji is a great success too.
That’s the last batch of koji for this year – 27 batches in all. Some have gone to making miso and amazake already, but there should be plenty left for more miso now and this fall, as well as for selling. And if I run out, I can always make more in december.
Success!
Ready for drying;
I will make one more batch of rye koji then a batch or two of rye miso next week. I think I’ll try to make a batch of rye amezake too, to see what that tastes like.
It looks good, smells good, feels good, tastes good and is growing well.
It’s the morning of the second day and it’s already sporulating. I think it’s going to be a success.
The normal koji making is done for this season. Now for an experiment. I’m sure someone, somewhere in the world has tried this before, but it’s going to be a first for me. Rye koji. I’ve always thought this would be difficult or impossible because of the hard shell around the kernal.
The farmer where I get my barley for making barley koji from, makes pearled or slightly polished barley by husking the barley a little extra in a machine. Rye has no husk, but I had him put some of his ecologically grown rye through that machine. The result looked like this;
After cleaning and soaking;
After steaming;
Then after cooling, innoculating with barley koji starter and incubating, it will be interesting to see what happens. I suspect the rye has not been polished enough. We’ll see.
With a bit more practice and help, my sourdough bread is starting to come up to standard.
In fact it’s delicious! It is moist, bubbly, holds together, and the crust is just right. It goes fast.
This loaf is made with sourdough starter (homemade), whole rye floor, whole wheat floor, salt, sunflower seeds and dried cranberries.
It is so easy to make. Soon I’ll post recipes for both starter and bread.
