The Art of Fermentation: An In-depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World

Front Cover
Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012 - Cooking - 498 pages

"The bible for the D.I.Y set: detailed instructions for how to make your own sauerkraut, beer, yogurt and pretty much everything involving microorganisms."--The New York Times

*Named a "Best Gift for Gardeners" by New York Magazine

The original guide to kraut, kombucha, kimchi, kefir, and kvass; mead, wine, and cider; pickles and relishes; tempeh, koji, miso, sourdough and so much more...!

Winner of the James Beard Foundation Book Award for Reference and Scholarship, and a New York Times bestseller, with more than a quarter million copies sold, The Art of Fermentation is the most comprehensive guide to do-it-yourself home fermentation ever published. Sandor Katz presents the concepts and processes behind fermentation in ways that are simple enough to guide a reader through their first experience making sauerkraut or yogurt, and in-depth enough to provide greater understanding and insight for experienced practitioners.

While Katz expertly contextualizes fermentation in terms of biological and cultural evolution, health and nutrition, and even economics, this is primarily a compendium of practical information--how the processes work; parameters for safety; techniques for effective preservation; troubleshooting; and more.

With two-color illustrations and extended resources, this book provides essential wisdom for cooks, homesteaders, farmers, gleaners, foragers, and food lovers of any kind who want to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation for arguably the oldest form of food preservation, and part of the roots of culture itself.

Readers will find detailed information on fermenting vegetables; sugars into alcohol (meads, wines, and ciders); sour tonic beverages; milk; grains and starchy tubers; beers (and other grain-based alcoholic beverages); beans; seeds; nuts; fish; meat; and eggs, as well as growing mold cultures, using fermentation in agriculture, art, and energy production, and considerations for commercial enterprises. Sandor Katz has introduced what will undoubtedly remain a classic in food literature, and is the first--and only--of its kind.

 

Contents

Fermentation as
1
Fermentation and Coevolution
10
Practical Benefits
17
Natto
24
Fermentation as a Strategy for Energy
32
Substrates and Microbial
66
Selective Environments
90
92
147
Salt
290
Dawadawa and Related West African
316
Fermenting Meat
337
nonFood Applications
387
Drying Salting Smoking
396
DryCured Sausages
407
Japanese Nare Zushi Fermenting Fish and Meat in Whey
415
Fermenting Eggs
484

Fermenting Grains
211
Water
275

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Common terms and phrases

About the author (2012)

Sandor Ellix Katz is a fermentation revivalist. A self-taught experimentalist who lives in rural Tennessee, his explorations in fermentation developed out of overlapping interests in cooking, nutrition, and gardening. He is the author of Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation, which was a New York Times bestseller and won a James Beard Foundation award in 2013--as well as the forthcoming Fermentation as Metaphor (October 2020). The hundreds of fermentation workshops he has taught around the world have helped catalyze a broad revival of the fermentation arts. The New York Times calls Sandor "one of the unlikely rock stars of the American food scene." For more information, check out his website www.wildfermentation.com. Michael Pollan is a contributing writer for "The New York Times Magazine" as well as a contributing editor at "Harper's" magazine. He is the author of two prize-winning books: "Second Nature: A Gardener's Education" and "A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder." Pollan lives in Connecticut with his wife and son.