道明寺・どうみょうじ
Domyoji
Domyoji flour: steamed glutinous rice, dried and coarsely crushed — the secret behind the grainy texture of Kansai-style sakura-mochi.
Domyoji flour is glutinous rice that has been soaked in water, steamed, dried and then coarsely crushed. The name comes from domyoji hoshii, a preserved food made at Domyoji, a temple in Osaka.
In the Kansai region, sakura-mochi means this grainy, chewy rice cake made with domyoji flour. Together with the scent of a salt-pickled cherry leaf, it is a sweet that announces spring. It looks entirely different from the sakura-mochi of the Kanto region (called chomeiji, in which bean paste is rolled in a thin baked wheat-flour crepe).
Besides sakura-mochi, it is used for tsubaki-mochi and for cool-looking summer sweets.
