Hello Bakers!
KOJI in Baking
"There isn’t one single way of consuming amazake. It is commonly used as a natural sweetener added to baking recipes (just a tablespoon or two will suffice for a nutritional boost, more is needed to really taste it); blended into fruit juice for a nutritious smoothie, or mixed into yoghurt or milk served as is or with muesli"
We’re not exactly sure why or how, but for some reason koji has the ability to lessen the density of a rye bread and allow you to create a light and fluffy bread even with a heavy ratio of rye. As time goes on we hope to get this bread into the hands of a scientist who can fully analyze it and tell us exactly what’s going on.
Sour amazake works fantastically in the creation of breads. It mimics some of the complexity of sourdough breads without the need to maintain a sourdough starter. At Larder most of the breads we produce incorporate amazake into their hydration. When we first developed these breads, we simply replaced a portion of the water called for with sour amazake that had its solids strained out.
If you love to bake in the home, on your job or in your business you will welcome KOJI based products to your list of possible ingredients in your next baked goods recipe. Koji is an enzymatic power house that can be used to make sour dough or added to your recipe as a sugar substitute that also hydrates and adds flavour to your baking. It is a great addition to your stack of tried and true flavour enhancers! KOJI has a well established relationship with Wheat as seen in the making of Soy Sauce, from the four basic ingredients of soybeans, wheat, salt and water.
"Daniel Collin of Ponce Bakery in Chico, California (1981) who baked a line of mouth watering Amazake Pastries made from innovative oatmeal amazake...was....probably the world’s first non-rice amazake..." - from History of Amazake & Rice Milk
"Kokon meibutsu gozen-gashi hidensho [The old and now famous secret methods of confectioners]. 1718. Kyoto: Umemura Ichirobei. 70 p. Japanese summary by Kawakami 1978, p. 43. [Jap]
• Summary: The book, whose author is unknown, contains 105 descriptions of how to make confections. In the section on making manju (steamed buns) is a description of making amazake for use in the buns. " from History of Amazake & Rice Milk
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