how do i ferment rice grains?

[Rawchicadee]

so how do i do this??

[Tim Hall]

Are you on a strictly raw diet?

[Rawchicadee]

Currently yes :)

[Tim Hall]

This is not to say there aren't ways to ferment rice raw, but unfortunately the only ones I know of involve cooking the rice at some point. The closest I can think of is amazake and miso...but the rice is steamed before it's fermented. In miso the koji (fermented rice) goes in in it's raw state, no further cooking. With amazake the koji gets heated to about 150F to activate specific enzymes.

In either case though, the enzyme activity of koji is so powerful it's probably (speculation on my part) stronger than any enzymes raw rice would have on its own. To my mind, even though amazake and miso are made with cooked ingredients, they are so enzyme-rich I think of them as raw foods.

[Aliyanna]

My family has issues with starch and would like to ferment it to make another dish that is more digestable....kinda like we do potatoes. I ferment potatoes all the time and we really like them and do well with them as before they are fermented...they are very problematic.
I was hoping that there was a similar thing to do for grains and rice.

tia
A

[music]

Hi Aliyanna, I hope this helps.

Soak brown rice for 24 hours in unchlorinated water. Drain it, and reserve 10% of the soaking liquid, keep this in the fridge. Next time you soak your rice, add the 10% of reserved soaking liquid to the new batch. Drain, reserve 10 %, keep it in the fridge, and so on. By the time you have done this 4 times or so, most of the phytic acid within the rice will be broken down, it will be more nutritionally open, and more digestible (ie the starch is converted, or pre-digested for you). Rice is also fermented with various mould and bacteria combinations for other foods, but these involve specific cultures, not wild fermentation, and doesn’t appear to be what you are asking about.

There is also fermentation of cooked rice, which uses yeast and sometimes a little sugar. Add yeast and sugar to cooked rice, it's done when a brownish liquid starts appearing in the bottom of the bowl.

Have you considered germinating it, by the way? There is a complex method 24 hour method, but the easy long 2-3 day soak is best. Change the water a few times. The end of the grain will bulge and discolour as it begins to germinate. Germinated grains may then be fermented as well, I usually do this with barley when I make lemon barley water, also useful in breadmaking. Germinating barley uses a different technique though.

The first and third of these also have crossover with slow fermented sourdough bread techniques, though the techniques are different, we work with similar basic principles. Slow fermented sourdough has negligible gluten content, but conscience directs to say that conventional wheat can never be redeemed, no matter our techniques are. I use spelt flour only in the wheat realm, mixed with other flours.