Attempts at improving sourdough using glutinous rice flour JonJ Sun, 07/27/2025 - 13:04 I've recently had a few great bakes that had glutinous rice flour in them and it seemed that it assisted with a strong oven spring, especially if cooked first as a roux (tangzhong/yudane).To understand it further, let's look at an experimental bake of four small breads (each with 500g of dough and each where 5% of the flour was a rice flour):Control bread using regular white rice flour as flour addition.Sticky rice as flour addition, not as rouxSticky rice roux (200% hydration)As per 3 but higher hydration, that's the thing with a roux it makes the hydration behave differently The roux for bread 3 on the left at 200% hydration; on the right the roux for bread 4 at 600% hydration.Overall hydration was 67.5% for samples 1-3; for sample 4 the hydration was 85% simply because I made an error with the maths and the tangzhong had a 600% hydration instead of the intended 300% and so it was over hydrated!The base recipe for each loaf was 208g Caputo Manitoba Oro, 52g spelt wholemeal, 4.7g salt, 150g water, 52g levain, and a roux of 13g glutinous rice flour with 26g of water. This was adjusted as follows: for sample 1 glutinous rice flour was swapped with regular white rice flour; for samples 1 and 2 no roux made and the 26g of additional water added to the base water (176g of water); for sample 4 the roux was 13g glutinous rice flour with 78g water and it had a higher hydration than the other 3 breads.From left to right breads 1 to 4.As you can see from the photos, the expected strong oven spring didn't happen. However breads 3 and 4 with the roux did open properly at the straight score whereas the other two breads did not.Crumb of breads 1 to 4 from left to right. Bread 4 was over-hydrated. No strong difference in oven spring, altough you can see that the two roux containing breads on the right opened up at the score nicely.Taste testing notes, subtle differences in flavour: bread 1 was distinctly more sour and the taste of breads 2-4 (containing glutinous rice flour) were preferred. Also, it was noticeable that the texture of breads 3 and 4 was better.In conclusion - some benefits were there, but were subtle and there was no noticeable improvement in oven spring (unlike what was expected!)-Jon  I don't know what's with… WanyeKest on 28 Jul 2025 at 09:39 I don't know what's with tangzhong though, I don't feel it has the efficacy of yudane/ starchy puree. I feel tangzhong is prone to...what is it... breaking down? whatever-lysis? I made preferment with tangzhong, ended up being soup and losing it's water retention capability. But never happened with potato puree.However Jon, I think it seems interesting to use cooked rice puree instead with water:rice ratio of risotto/rice pudding. It's been on my mind lately. I'm also curious to compare starchy versus waxy rice varieties.Nice experiments, Jon!Jay What do you think are the… tpassin on 28 Jul 2025 at 10:52 In reply to I don't know what's with… by WanyeKest What do you think are the differences between a tangzhong and a yudane? Though they are really the same thing, I get the idea that common usage has a yudane made by dumping boiling water over the starch/flour and stirring, whereas a tangzhong involves heating a mixture of water and starch/flour at a temperature close to 165 deg F (so "cooking", maybe, but no boiling). Both ways try to avoid inactivating enzymes with too high a temperature (the boiling water will cool down before it hits most of the solids) since the hope is to activate the enzymes in addition to gelatinizing the starch.TomP Setting my thinking on a different path JonJ on 28 Jul 2025 at 11:46 In reply to What do you think are the… by tpassin Thanks Tom for setting my thinking on a different path. What I did here was pour boiling water on top and then stir over heat perhaps for 1 to 2 minutes. With glutinous rice flour it doesn't come together straight away, you need to stir until it also shows distinct "glassiness".Your comment has now made me think I might have denatured enzymes by starting with boiling water. I had previously seem some signs that the roux made with glutinous rice did result in amazing oven spring, so was a bit flummoxed by this bake that there was no effect at all, perhaps though the method of preparation of the roux is more important than I thought. I think it would be worth… tpassin on 28 Jul 2025 at 12:41 In reply to Setting my thinking on a different path by JonJ I think it would be worth while to repeat the version with a glutinous rice mix and this time, make the tangzhong by heating the water/rice mixture to about 160 - 165 deg F and holding it in that range for some time.  This ought to improve the flavor and release more sugars.  If anything's going to cause more oven spring with this rice flour, I would think this way would. As usual Jay you're thinking in wonderful creative ways JonJ on 28 Jul 2025 at 11:49 In reply to I don't know what's with… by WanyeKest Jay you're thinking in wonderful creative ways! If this one had worked out I might have wanted to play with tapioca starch and corn starch too.-Jon Really interesting, Jon ll433 on 28 Jul 2025 at 11:53 I'm glad you got round to conducting these experiments; I was really looking forward to your results. I was indeed expecting that the roux bread will have a bigger oven spring than the non-roux, so this is really interesting. Perhaps there's something to be said about the elasticity of the glutinous rice roux "pulling back" the dough? Just wild guesses. Also interesting that the glutinous rice bread produced a less sour bread than the regular rice bread. Is there something about the sugars of regular rice that are more readily available for breakdown than glutinous rice?I've always gone the tangzhong route for my milk breads so can't comment much on the yudane method! But I agree with Jay that sweet potato puree retains water exceptionally well.

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