I should not watch cooking documentaries. The newest Chef's Table season has Korean nun Jeong Kwan as on of the people they feature. I find that that her relationship with food inspiring. I was already fermenting many things but when she talked about fermenting soy sauce I was "you can do that?" I am doing it. The research is not even hard. Yeastie Beasties and time. It is what it takes to make soy sauce. That is most of my life so it fits.
I started with 12 ounces of wheat and roasted it until golden. I took out my stone flour mill and ground the berries into a flour
I cooked soybeans so I had a pound of cooked soybeans. I mashed them into a paste.
I mixed the soybeans and flour together.
I put the soybean and flour mixture into a ziploc bag with damp paper towels and let it sit on the counter for a week. I had to bleed off the gases that the fermentation created a couple times.
After the fermentation had started for a week, I took the soybean flour mixture and put it into a large glass cookie bin. I added 8 ounces of salt. I used Real salt. I also added 1 gallon of water. I mixed well.
I covered the mixture. Put is on a shelf. I stir it once a day for the first six weeks. Then I will stir it once a week. In six months, I should have soy sauce. I can let this continue to ferment even after that so I may just take a little as needed and let it go. It will be like the pu-erh tea I like to drink. The flavor will change over time. The fermentation will continue.
Time. Yeastie Beasties. A strange and interesting adventure.