Preparation of Full-Nutrition Oat Starch

[qiuwenxing]

Let me share how to make full-nutrition oat starch—a type of food that generally has less residue (and is more digestible) than regular oats.

1. Prepare an appropriate amount of rolled oats (regular ones work fine, or your preferred brand; I used 20g for this demo).

2. Preliminary crushing (you can use a grinder, but don’t grind it into powder just yet—crushing it into oat bits is enough).

3. Repeatedly roll with a rolling pin or similar object, then perform initial sieving (60-80 mesh). Collect the coarse particles and keep rolling and sieving them repeatedly (about 3-4 more times, depending on your quantity).

4. Sieve the material obtained from the initial sieving again with a fine sieve (80-100 mesh). (Don’t throw away the unsieved material from this step and the previous one yet!)

5. Most of the unsieved residue is bran—don’t waste it. Collect it in an airtight container, add water (300-400ml per 100g of bran), and shake vigorously for 30 seconds to 1 minute. (This step is to collect soluble components like some proteins and vitamins.)

6. Quickly filter with a soy milk filtering tool (I forgot how many mesh the gauze is), filter only once. The residue can be kept (it can also feed slime molds, but use it soon or dry it for storage) or discarded.

7. Let the filtrate settle (it’s better to settle it in the fridge, otherwise it easily turns bad) or filter it with filter paper, then take the clear liquid (you can add the additives mentioned later at this step) and mix it evenly with the fine powder obtained from the previous fine sieving.

8. Quickly dry the mixture (by baking or air-drying), then grind it—and you’ll get full-nutrition oat starch! (Try not to exceed 60°C when drying, as higher temperatures will cause gelatinization, making it clump later and hard to grind. You can use a baking tray for hot air drying. If you have a grinder, it doesn’t matter—you can even use hot water in step 5. I didn’t because hot water causes starch gelatinization.)

Benefits:
1.Easy to digest and absorb; favored by slime molds (most species that can eat oats).
2.Almost no mucus left (if there is any, it’s mostly because the layer was spread too thick, leading to incomplete digestion and utilization—resulting in mucous-like mixed bacterial colonies or biofilms composed of various capsulated bacilli and relatively few yeasts. The same goes for mucus appearing after feeding regular oats).
3. Little to no food residue left (there might still be some, mainly from overly fine sieved bran or powder that was occupied by microorganisms before being eaten).

Usage Methods:
1. Evenly sprinkle the powder in the direction the plasmodium is moving or directly on the plasmodium. (If sprinkling on the plasmodium, don’t make it too thick or use too much—adjust the amount based on the plasmodium’s size. Also, ensure the culture medium has a certain level of humidity and moisture.)
2. Mix the powder with an appropriate amount of water to make a paste (not too thin or too thick—similar to millet porridge). Drop the paste on the plasmodium or in its moving direction, then gently smooth it out. (Again, don’t make it too thick or too large; adjust the amount based on the plasmodium’s size.)

Storage:
Keep it as dry as possible, store it in an airtight container away from light at room temperature (25°C). The shelf life is tentatively 2 years, provided there are no visible changes in properties.

Recommended Additives (Can Be Used):
1. Calcium bicarbonate or other soluble calcium salts (food-grade ones for human calcium supplementation; try to choose soluble ones with a solution pH close to neutral or 6-8. Calcium carbonate works too, but avoid calcium nitrate or calcium hydroxide. Use pure substances instead of finished products with added excipients).
Dosage: 0.1-0.5% calcium by total weight (e.g., 0.1-0.5g calcium in 100g full-nutrition oat starch).

Adding Method: Dissolve in the clear liquid in step 7.

Function: Calcium supplementation (slime molds have high calcium requirements). Calcium bicarbonate or calcium carbonate can also act as pH buffers to reduce the impact of spoilage.

2. Lysozyme (Yes, slime molds have no cell walls, so they aren’t affected by it. They are also not very sensitive to other antibiotics including β-lactams, streptomycin, gentamicin, and tetracyclines).

Dosage: 0.1% by total weight (e.g., 0.1g lysozyme in 100g full-nutrition oat starch).

Adding Method: Dissolve in the clear liquid in step 7.

Function: Preservative and bacteriostatic. It can delay spoilage by 1-2 days (at 25°C; it won’t work at over 30°C). It also inhibits the growth of miscellaneous bacteria (but not fungi like yeast and mold).

Why not just grind it and add it to the finished product? You can, if you can mix it evenly enough.

Why not just buy oat flour? Commercial oat flour contains bran, which leaves residue after slime molds eat it and is prone to mold growth. We “wash out” the nutrients from the bran first, so there’s almost no residue.

You can use an 80-mesh sieve for all sieving steps (if you don’t want to buy other sieves). In principle, finer is better, though.

Go copy this "homework"—if it flops, come yell at me (just kidding).

If you have any questions, please leave a message in the comment section or my personal email. I will usually reply within 48 hours.

I apologize for not providing demonstration photos.