sakadane — MikrobenKabinett

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MikrobenKabinett is what I call my fermentation cabinet — a bubbling, living archive.

Here I keep a growing collection of starter cultures that I’ve collected, nurtured, traded, or purchased over the years, along with several ongoing jarred fermentation experiments.

This page is a digital duplicate of the cabinet at home. It serves both as a record of each “member” in the Kabinett, and as a practical manual: If you’ve ever received a culture from me in real life, you’ll likely find its basic ratios and reference recipes here — to help you start your own fermentation journey!

Welcome to explore！
Xijing Xu
info@xijingxu.com
https://xijingxu.com
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Sakadane

A liquid starter fed with koji and rice, can be used to ferment dough.
Common in China and Japan for Bao cooking and bread baking.

“Bächle “

born on 10.07.2025 in Berlin

Feeding ratio

1:5:3:3
Previous starter : cooked rice : koji : water

My regular feeding amount:
5g previous starter
25g rice
15g koji
15g water

After the feeding, let it sit at room temperature for 12 hours. Then aerate, seal, and refrigerate overnight for the use at the next day.

Feeding schedule

Once a week at the Fridge temperature

Charakter of Sakadane

Comparing to a normal sourdough, sakadane is more capable of dealing with dough with a higher sugar content.
As I am very new with this type of starter, so far I have been only making toast with it. But the plan is to try it with more sweet and fluffy pastry, such as Baozi, Juanzi, Germknödel etc.

Sample recipe /
Toast

Here is a recipe I copied from Xiaohongshu, but I keep adjusting it based on my toast form, oven, and the activity of my sakadane.

PS:
I'm using a Japanese L160 toast form (about 160 × 80 × 80 mm).

Pre-dough

37g sakadane
37g milk
37g flour

Let rest at room temperature for 1.5–2 hours until it doubles in volume.

Main dough

Predough
150g flour
I enjoy eating soft, white (admittedly unhealthy) toast, so for this type of bread, I prefer using flour with high gluten and low ash content. In Germany, where I live, that means looking for flour with a type number below 450, but with more than 12g of protein per 100g—which is nearly impossible to find. So I usually go for Italian tipo 00 flour or pizza flour instead.85g milk
20g yoghurt
10g sugar
3g salt
10g butter

Mix all the ingredients until well combined, and let the dough proof at room temperature for 1–2 hours. Then cover and place it in the fridge to ferment overnight.

On the second day, take the dough out of the fridge and let it come back to room temperature for about 30 minutes.
Shape the dough and place it into the toast form. Let it continue fermenting at room temperature until it rises to 80–90% of the height of the form. This can take anywhere between 2 to 6 hours, depending on the environment and dough activity.

Bake at around 200°C for about 30 minutes. Adjust based on your oven and preferred crust color.