Rice

Rice is a grain. What you cook is usually milled kernels with bran (and often germ) more or less removed. That is a mill decision, cousin to Milling even when the mill is a rice mill rather than a wheat mill.

21 CFR Part 137 includes enriched rice: forms of milled rice (except talc-and-glucose coated rice) to which specified nutrients have been added ¹. That is an identity for enriched milled rice, not a botanical essay and not a claim about every bag of rice. Ordinary milled rice and brown rice are still rice; they are not that enriched standard unless the label is playing that game.

Rice is not Wheat. It does not build a gluten network. It is not Corn meal. Bakers use rice flour as a different Starch paste; that is a formula choice, not wheat flour under another name. Application, when it is bread or pastry: Baking.

What to notice. Smell the dry grain: clean, not musty. Cooked rice should be grains or a porridge on purpose, not a glue accident you called risotto. Absorption depends on variety, milling, and the cooking method.

Water is cooking medium here, not baker’s hydration. See Water only when you are in dough.