Rice Reinvented: Seoul Bakery Turns Local Rice into French-Style Pastries
Creatrip Team
3 months ago
In Seoul’s Jung-gu district, boutique shop Danmi Rice Dessert (단미쌀디저트) swaps wheat for Korean rice to make French-style treats like financiers, tarts and quiches. Owner Kim Gyuri spent over a year developing recipes and found the Shin-dong-jin (신동진) rice variety—firm, less sticky grains—works best. Using a wet-milling process (soaking rice before grinding) creates moist, tender textures without wheat. The shop makes more than ten financier varieties—black squid-ink, fig cream-cheese, salty chocolate, and more—plus egg tarts, nut-filled tarts and savory quiches. They use about 30 kg of domestic rice weekly (roughly 1,500 kg annually) and process freshly harvested rice to avoid preservatives. The rice-based pastries are easy to digest, popular with all ages, and often sold out; they also make popular year-end gifts. Kim promotes rice’s potential through pop-up events, aiming to expand domestic rice use in baked goods.
