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Starters and koji from Indonesia, Malaysia

Ragi (ragi tape, Indonesian/Malay starter cake)

Ragi is a small dry cake of raw rice flour and spices, seeded with powder from an older cake. The cakes sit on bamboo trays under muslin for two to five days while moulds and yeasts grow over them, then they are dried. Used with glutinous rice or cassava, ragi makes sweet, mildly alcoholic tape and tapai.

Fully documentedStarters and koji2 days – 5 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedMakers do not use fixed amounts; the sources give the method and the seeding rate, not a recipe.
Rice flour[fao138][ragi2022]
Spices such as pepper, garlic, cinnamon and cayenneOhisa describes the flavouring as a mixture of local herbs and spices[ragi2022][ohisa2026]
WaterA small amount, to moisten the flour and herbs into a dough[ohisa2026]
Powdered ragi from a former batchAsian starter cakes are commonly seeded with about 1–2 % of an earlier starter[tamang2016]
Starterback-slop: powder of a former batch of ragi

Total time across the recorded steps: 2 days – 5 days

Start
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What changes: Rice flour and spices are wetted into a dough

Step 1 of 5
Moisten rice flour and spices into a dough
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Moulds
Yeasts

Output: spiced rice dough.

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

Ragi is a small dry cake of raw rice flour and spices, seeded with powder from an older cake. The cakes sit on bamboo trays under muslin for two to five days while moulds and yeasts grow over them, then they are dried. Used with glutinous rice or cassava, ragi makes sweet, mildly alcoholic tape and tapai. Made in 5 steps over 2 days – 5 days. The longest step, incubate on bamboo trays under muslin, takes 2–5 days (Haard N.F 1999) and runs at 25–30 °C (Haard N.F 1999). Amylomyces rouxii and Endomycopsis burtonii do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step2–5 daysReported[fao138]Incubate on bamboo trays under muslin
Temperature25–30 °CReported[fao138]Incubate on bamboo trays under muslin

What makes this one different

Ragi is a raw rice-flour cake seeded from the last batch, like Chinese xiaoqu and Thai loog-pang. An important mould in it is Amylomyces rouxii and it carries amylolytic yeasts, so one cake both sweetens and ferments the rice.

Related ferments

Made the ragi way

Safety

No safety data specific to ragi was found.

History and sources

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

The FAO bulletin (Haard et al. 1999), citing Steinkraus (1983), groups ragi with Philippine bubod and Korean nuruk as starters made by natural fermentation of raw cereal powder moulded into cakes.

  1. [fao138] Haard N.F., Odunfa S.A., Lee C.H., Quintero-Ramírez R. et al. 1999, Fermented cereals, a global perspective, FAO Agricultural Services Bulletin 138, chapter 3 (Cereal fermentations in countries of the Asia-Pacific region), Table 2 and Figure 3gov
  2. [ragi2022] Delva E., Arisuryanti T., Ilmi M. 2022, Genetic diversity of Amylomyces rouxii from Ragi tapai in Java Island based on ribosomal regions ITS1/ITS2 and D1/D2, Mycobiology 50(2):132–141paper
  3. [ohisa2026] Ohisa N. 2026, Traditional foods and starters utilizing salt and osmo-tolerant yeast Hyphopichia burtonii, Microorganisms 14(8):1736paper
  4. [tamang2016] Tamang J.P., Watanabe K., Holzapfel W.H. 2016, Review, diversity of microorganisms in global fermented foods and beverages, Frontiers in Microbiology 7:377paper