Wild Fermentation

The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods

Bread. Cheese. Wine. Beer. Coffee. Chocolate. Most people consume fermented foods and drinks every day. For thousands of years, humans have enjoyed the distinctive flavors and nutrition resulting from the transformative power of microscopic bacteria and fungi. Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, 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 flavors 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.

Sandor Ellix Katz is a resident steward of Short Mountain Sanctuary, an intentional community located in rural Tennessee. As someone who is living with AIDS, Katz has found that "living" fermented foods have helped to support his health. He is an impassioned and outspoken advocate of the benefits that these natural, traditional, and above all "real" foods have to offer. For more information on Katz and Wild Fermentation, please visit his Web site www.wildfermentation.com.

In his own words:

"I have been fermenting foods and drinks for a decade. It started with sauerkraut. I found an old crock buried in our barn, harvested cabbage from our garden, chopped it up, salted it, and waited. That first kraut tasted so alive and powerfully nutritious! Its sharp flavor sent my salivary glands into a frenzy and got me hooked on fermentation. I have made sauerkraut ever since, earning the nickname Sandorkraut, even as my repertoire has expanded. I have explored and experimented widely in the realm of fermentation, and I want to share what I have learned."

"Wild Fermentation takes readers on a tour of fermented foods from around the globe--many of them delicacies available at Zabar's--and describes techniques for making them at home. For me the book was a nostalgic journey, reminding me of traditional foods I knew in my childhood, which are rarely found today. This is a book that will fascinate and inspire food lovers."

—Saul Zabar, owner of Zabar's, New York City

Errata

Page 25 of Wild Fermentation did not print properly in the third printing. If your book is from printing #3, you may download page 25 here.

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