As a follow up to my other post using sake lees, I wanted to see if I could use sake lees in baking. Similar to spent grain from beer, I figured they could be good for making bread, and even act as an interesting sour-dough starter for the bread, since there are still active cultures in the lees. Apparently, the sake lees are used to make a type of cracker in Japan, so this idea seemed promising.

The recipes I found both suggested combining the sake lees with some kind of flour, but I wasn’t convinced that the proportions they advised were right. So I decided to test which proportion of flour to sake lees would work best and test best.

Testing the proportions

I figured I’d try the sake lees at 25%, 50%, 66% and then 100%. I’d added the 100% at the last minute just for fun, but without expecting too much out of it. I thought the all-lees version wouldn’t even hold together, while the other versions would properly bind because they had some of gluten there. However, as you’ll see the 100% turned out to be a success!

One thing I should note though is that my sake lees is probably VERY different from the kind you can buy in the store, because mine also has brown rice and I did nothing to process it.

Anyway, here are my tests! I’d added salt and the sake lees to the flour and eyeballed enough water to make a dough. I definitely added too much water, but then again, I was less interested in making a proper loaf, than seeing what the difference in taste would be.

Clockwise from top left: 25%, 50%, 66%, and 100%. Hard to tell from my shitty photo, but the 25% and 50% were very very bubbly and loose.

I then baked all four at 450F for 40 mins. Like I said, I added WAY too much water, so the batter just spread out on the pain rather disastrously. They cooked fine though, so at least I could taste it. From left, it’s 25%, 50%, 66%, and 100%. Surprisingly, the 66% and 100% held together! Sure, I added just a touch of water to them, but then again I wasn’t expecting to hold together at all!

What did they taste like? The 25% and 50% were fine, but nothing to write home about. They were moist and had an unsurprising sourdough taste to them, but nothing especially notable. The 50% was certainly browner, to which I attribute the sugars in the sake lees.

The 66% and the 100% were by far the tastiest. Here’s a close up of the 66%.

Here’s the pic of the 100%

In retrospect, I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised that they held together. It’s rice after all! And it was cooked rice too, so of course it stuck together. What was more surprising and pleasantly so was that the flavour was very very good. The 66% and 100% were both sour and salty, but also somewhat sweet. They also had a pleasant chewiness to them.

My version!

So I decided to make my version out of the 100%. They were quite chewy, so I figured they could be like savoury cookies. But then I thought of something better. They could be quenelles! Super easy to make so long as you have two spoons.

So again, I took about 2 cups of sake lees and mashed it all up in a bowl. I added a tablespoon of salt and mixed it together.