Bread. Cheese. Wine. Beer. Coffee. Chocolate. Most people consume fermented foods and drinks every day. For thousands of years, humans have enjoyed the distinctive flavours and nutrition resulting from the transformative power of microscopic bacteria and fungi. Wild Fermentation: The Flavour, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods is the first cookbook to widely explore the culinary magic of fermentation.
"Fermentation has been an important journey of discovery for me," writes author Sandor Ellix Katz. "I invite you to join me along this effervescent path, well trodden for thousands of years yet largely forgotten in our time and place, bypassed by the superhighway of industrial food production." The flavours of fermentation are compelling and complex, quite literally alive. This book takes readers on a whirlwind trip through the wide world of fermentation, providing readers with basic and delicious recipes-some familiar, others exotic-that are easy to make at home.
The book covers vegetable ferments such as sauerkraut, kimchi, and sour pickles; bean ferments including miso, tempeh, dosas, and idli; dairy ferments including yogurt, kefir, and basic cheesemaking (as well as vegan alternatives); sourdough bread-making; other grain fermentations from Cherokee, African, Japanese, and Russian traditions; extremely simple wine- and beer-making (as well as cider-, mead-, and champagne-making) techniques; and vinegar-making. With nearly 100 recipes, this is the most comprehensive and wide-ranging fermentation cookbook ever published.
Reviews:
“These riddles festered until the day I stumbled across the book Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz…” - Discover
“In our mad rush to adopt newer, more technological food production, we have abandoned the fermenting, healthful wisdom of our forebears. Sandor Katz’s book reclaims one of the most important, and ecologically sustainable, processes of preserving and enhancing foods that humankind has discovered. Wild Fermentation is a significant, hands-on, journey through the miracle of fermented foods.” Stephen Harrod Buhner, author of Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers: The Secrets of Ancient Fermentation< and The Lost Language of Plants
“In its kooky and non-intimidating way, Sandor’s book, Wild Fermentation, takes us on a journey through time, taste, and anthropology, with a unique and refreshing look at the current state of the world….Wild Fermentation will set you spinning through healthy and exciting possibilities developed over the millennia by people and microbes working together in all sorts of wild combinations…I laugh out loud when I think about this book being read by the public. It’s full of easily digestible radical analysis and the matter-of-factness of Sandor’s fabulous lifestyle among the radical faeries living in the rural wilderness of middle Tennessee.” -
“This is a very well written book, a pleasure to read, with excellent information and easy recipes for cultured and fermented foods. If you read it carefully, you will even find a recipe for a gentle social activism that will help you feel you can indeed do something to improve the state of the world.” - Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D., author of Food and Healing
“While the recipes are plentiful the author’s writing is what pulled me in and captivated me. He is very knowledgeable on the subject of fermented foods and examines them through a historical, scientific, and even a philosophical sense… Wild Fermentation is a book that is well written and interesting to read as well as to cook from. It can inspire a person in life (and the cycle of it), and also in food, to get back to these most basic and nourishing homemade foods that are simple to make but have almost been obliterated from our daily lives. As I type these words there are crocks of sauerkraut and bread starter bubbling away on my kitchen counter, and after reading Wild Fermentation I not only appreciate but also understand the life cycles of each.” - Cheftalk.com
Foreword to Wild Fermentation, by Sally Fallon, author of the nutrition and cookbook Nourishing Traditions.
The process of fermenting foods—to preserve them and to make them more digestible and more nutritious—is as old as humanity. From the Tropics—where cassava is thrown into a hole in the ground to allow it to soften and sweeten—to the Arctic—where fish are customarily eaten “rotten” to the consistency of ice cream—fermented foods are valued for their health-giving properties and for their complex tastes.
Unfortunately, fermented foods have largely disappeared from the western diet, much to the detriment of our health and economy. For fermented foods are a powerful aid to digestion and a protection against disease; and because fermentation is, by nature, an artisanal process, the disappearance of fermented foods has hastened the centralization and industrialization of our food supply, to the detriment of small farms and local economies.
The taste for fermented foods is usually an acquired taste. Few of us can imagine eating fermented tofu crawling with worms, which is relished in parts of Japan, or bubbly sorghum beer, smelling like the contents of your stomach, which is downed by the gallons in parts of Africa. But then, few Africans or Asians can enjoy the odiferous chunks of rotten milk (called cheese) that are so pleasing to western palates. To those who have grown up with fermented foods, they offer the most sublime of eating experiences—and there are many that will appeal to western tastes even without a long period of accustomisation.
In the spirit of the great reformers and artists, Sandor Katz has laboured mightily to deliver this opus magnum to a population hungry for a reconnection to real food, and to the process of life itself. For fermented foods are not only satisfying to eat, they are also immensely satisfying to prepare. From the first successful batch of kombucha, to that thrilling bubbly pop when the lid is removed from a jar of homemade sauerkraut, the practice of fermentation is one of partnership with microscopic life. This partnership leads to a reverence for all the processes that contribute to the well being of the human race, from the production of enzymes by invisible bacteria to the gift of milk and meat from the sacred cow.
The science and art of fermentation is, in fact, the basis of human culture—without culturing, there is no culture. Nations that still consume cultured foods, like France with its wine and cheese, and Japan with its pickles and miso, are recognized as nations that have culture. Culture begins at the farm, not in the opera house, and binds a people to a land and its artisans. Many commentators have observed that America is a nation lacking culture—how can we be cultured when we only eat food that has been canned, pasteurized and embalmed? How ironic that the road to culture in our germophobic technological society requires, first and foremost, that we enter into an alchemical relationship with bacteria and fungi, and that we bring to our tables foods and beverages prepared by the magicians, not machines.
Wild Fermentation represents not only an effort to bring back from oblivion these treasured processes, but also a road map to a better world, a world of healthy people and equitable economies, a world that especially values those iconoclastic, free-thinking individuals—so often labelled misfits—uniquely qualified to perform the alchemy of fermented foods.
Table of Contents:
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Foreword by Sally Fallon
- Acknowledgments
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Introduction Cultural Context: The Making of a Fermentation Fetish
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Chapter 1. Cultural Rehabilitation: The Health Benefits of Fermented Foods
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Chapter 2. Cultural Theory: Human Beings and the Phenomenon of Fermentation
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Chapter 3. Cultural Homogenization: Standardization, Uniformity, and Mass Production
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Chapter 4. Cultural Manipulation: A Do-It-Yourself Guide
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Chapter 5. Vegetable Ferments
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Chapter 6. Bean Ferments
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Chapter 7. Dairy Ferments (and Vegan Alternatives)
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Chapter 8. Breads (and Pancakes)
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Chapter 9. Fermented-Grain Porridges and Beverages
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Chapter 10. Wines (Including Mead, Cider, and Ginger Beer)
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Chapter 11. Beers
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Chapter 12. Vinegars
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Chapter 13. Cultural Reincarnation: Fermentation in the Cycles of Life, Soil Fertility, and Social Change
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Appendix: Cultural Resources
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
