The Catcher of the Rye: Homemade rye bread using bamboo

Bamboo is plant that can dominate a forest very quickly. Let them unattended, its strong rhizome ignores any human made barriers in the forest. They can start choking mighty oaks and tall cypresses that are on the other side of the aisle. So, Niiharu Lovers 新治市民の森愛護会 are always busy thinning and managing bamboo forests, all year round. In Niiharu, there are several bamboo forests of different landlords. Often, they are elderly owners who cannot engage in management works of their bamboos by themselves. Once they decided to ask Lovers to take care of their property, the place is, without fail, in a mess. Even normally enthusiastic Niiharu Lovers hesitate to start working on them. “Well, we’re already mouthful with Mr. X’s bamboo forests that would take another 2-3 years to clear. So, new places must wait …,” so the argument goes.

A tall Chinese parasol tree is
 besieged by bamboos …

One of the reasons why it is not a piece of cake to deal with bamboo forest is, we have to think how to clear the cut bamboos from the site. Just cutting bamboos and let them lay on the ground does not solve the problem at all. The number of thinned bamboos, often more than 15m tall, is often LOTS, and the newer ones come every spring en masse. Leaving the thinned ones in a forest simply exacerbates the chaos. Moreover, piling them unorderly can create nice locations for wasps’ nests. They can become deadly for everybody in the forest. So, in Yokohama’s Citizen Forest, the City asks Forest Lovers to “Remove any stems of the cut bamboos; Cut the cleared trunks in 3m a piece; The removed stems should be securely fastened by straw ropes to be a bunch; The treated bamboos trunks and stems must be collected at such-a-such place neatly.” The garbage collectors hired by the City come regularly to pick up treated bamboos for processing factories of garden mulches, or for incineration. Yeah, it’s a very nice system of sustainability. Harasho for SDGs. But the first step we Lovers of Forest, i.e. thinning bamboos in an orderly way, is not at all simple gardening tasks. Besides, the collectors can come only 3-4 times a year. Meanwhile, the piles of thinned bamboos are growing taller, just like sprouting bamboos.

Lovers of Niiharu are creating hand-made goods out of these thinned bamboos, baking bamboo charcoals, using them for facility maintenance, bringing them to nearby elementary to teach kids how to make traditional toys from bamboos … I used it for making a broom (; my post on February 22, 2019). Still, there remains piles of bamboos. One weekend last month, after preparing New Year’s ornament, I saw a pile in Niiharu, with a sort of hopelessness … Then, it clicked: how about using them as baking tins?

My New Year’s ornament, Kadomatsu, for 2021

The mother of invention

During the fall 2020 there were so many incidences in the other parts of Japan where starving bears came to human settlement for food. In 2020, Japanese forests in general had small crops of acorns, the main sustenance for bears. Poor guys. Though, in Yokohama without population of bears, acorns of many variety had a bumper year. Some parts of roads were covered with powdered acorns, where fallen acorns from street oaks were finely milled by car traffics. I fantasized to collect such flour to bake acorn cookies without that memorable effort (; my post on September 11, 2015) ... Then, voilà, here are plenty of bamboos with nice round cups to be ideal baking tins! I didn’t collect powdered acorns, but brought home several remnants of thinned bamboos. What to bake? I decided to make pure rye bread with bamboo baking mold. Here is the recipe I used:

The powder covering the road is
 acorn flour!

<Making rye bread with bamboo mold>

1. Mix 200g of rye flour with 80g of dry molted rice + 1 tsp of salt in a large bowl.

Dry molted rice.
 With increasing demand for “boosting immune system,”
 these days there is a craze for such fermented foods in Japan.
 We can find several brands for dry molted rice
 at an ordinary supermarket in Yokohama.

Rye + dry molted rice + salt

2. Add lukewarm water little by little and knead the dough until the mixture becomes a ball.

It needs more water …

3. Cover the dough with a plastic wrap or put it in a plastic bag. Leave it for 24 hours in warm place. I left it in a sunroom during day and kept the bowl in a living room during night, wrapping it with a bath towel.

The dough is covered by plastic wraps.

4. 24 hours later, coat inside of the bamboo mold with olive oil and put the dough there. If the dough is dry, add little bit of lukewarm water again.

Bamboo mold with olive oil

The dough is stuffed in the mold and settled in a steamer.

5. Steam it with a medium to low heat for at least one hour. If you have a firewood stove, I think you can use the heat for this process.

Steaming …

6. Look! 100% natural rye bread of mine. Bonus: it smells serene scent of bamboo forest!

By using malted rice, we don’t need sugar for this recipe. The bread is tasty with slight sweetness in freshening smell from tranquil forest. Above all, it’s so easy to make. I expected the bamboo mold would be destroyed after cooking. Nope. It’s still fairly sturdy. Come to think of it, Japanese have used bamboos for so many cooking utensils. They can be a good member of kitchen gadget, even as a baking tin … I’m not sure if they can be OK with oven, though … Heck. COVID-19 State of Emergency now in Yokohama. I have time to cook!

Magic of olive oil did a nice job;
 there was no need to loosen the bread from the mold.
 It smoothly came out to the bread tray.

If you find environmental issues in Kanagawa Prefecture, please make a contact with Kanagawa Natural Environment Conservation Center 神奈川県自然環境保全センター

657 Nanasawa, Atsugi City, 243-0121
〒243－0121　厚木市七沢657
Phone: 046-248-0323

You can send an enquiry to them by clicking the bottom line of their homepage at http://www.pref.kanagawa.jp/div/1644/