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Cereals and bread from China

Bread leaven from sour liquid (《食經》作餅酵法)餅酵

A recipe for a dough leaven in the Northern Wei Qimin Yaoshu. A sour liquid (酸漿) is boiled down, rice is cooked in it into a gruel, and the gruel is worked into flour, with twice as much in winter as in the sixth month. The text gives amounts but no times or temperatures.

Fully documentedCereals and bread

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceAmounts as the Qimin Yaoshu quotes them from the Shijing, in Northern Wei measures (1 dou = 10 sheng; 1 dan = 10 dou). The text does not convert them and neither do we.
Sour liquid (酸漿)1 dou (斗)Boiled down to 7 sheng (升)[qmys-ws][qmys-sk]
Non-glutinous rice (粳米)1 shengCooked in the reduced sour liquid like gruel; the text says 遲下火, take it off the fire late[qmys-ws][qmys-sk]
The leaven, worked into 1 dan (石) of flour2 sheng in the sixth month, 4 sheng in winter[qmys-ws][qmys-sk]
Startera sour liquid (酸漿)
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What changes: The sour liquid boils down to about seven tenths of its volume

Step 1 of 3
Boil down the sour liquid
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

A recipe for a dough leaven in the Northern Wei Qimin Yaoshu. A sour liquid (酸漿) is boiled down, rice is cooked in it into a gruel, and the gruel is worked into flour, with twice as much in winter as in the sixth month. The text gives amounts but no times or temperatures.

What makes this one different

The leaven is not old dough but a gruel of rice cooked in a reduced sour liquid (酸漿). The recipe sets the leaven dose by season, with 2 sheng per dan of flour in the sixth month and 4 sheng in winter.

Related ferments

Variants

  • White bread (作白餅法), the next recipe in the same chapter7–8 sheng of white rice cooked to gruel with 6–7 sheng of white wine as the leaven, heated until it shows fish-eye bubbles, strained and kneaded into 1 dan of flour.

Safety

The Qimin Yaoshu gives no safety advice, and no study of this leaven was found. In general, spores of Bacillus cereus survive cooking above 100 °C, and cooked rice kept in a warm, moist, starchy place can let them grow and make the emetic toxin cereulide (Schopmeyer et al. 2026). The recipe cooks rice into a gruel and then works it into flour.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Qimin Yaoshu (齊民要術) by Jia Sixie (賈思勰), juan 9, chapter 82 餅法. The Siku edition heads the book 後魏 (Later Wei, Northern Wei). The recipe is introduced as 《食經》曰, a quotation from the Shijing (食經).

Microbes
No study we found names its microbes.
Process times
The sources we found give no figure for how long any of its steps take.
Temperature, salt and pH
The sources we found give no temperature, salt or pH figure for any of its steps.
  1. [qmys-ws] Jia Sixie (賈思勰), Qimin Yaoshu (齊民要術), juan 9, chapter 82 餅法, 《食經》曰作餅酵法, Chinese Wikisource textbook
  2. [qmys-sk] Jia Sixie, Qimin Yaoshu, Siku quanshu edition, juan 9 (食經曰作餅酵法), transcription on Chinese Wikisourcebook
  3. [wp-qmys] Wikipedia, Qimin Yaoshu (outline; date and author), read 2026-10-31wiki
  4. [schopmeyer2026] Schopmeyer L., Biewenga M., van der Voort M., van Herwerden M. 2026, Fulminant multi-organ failure associated with cereulide-producing Bacillus cereus after consumption of improperly stored rice, BMJ Case Reports 19(10):e275511paper