Sandor Katz: Reclaiming Our Food Sovereignty Through Fermentation | Book the Livestream

In truth, beyond pickles, fermented products such as bread, cheese, yoghurt, sour cream, Italian salami, vinegar, soy sauce, chocolate, coffee, beer and wine have long been the soul of our family’s diet (just as in many other households) – though we never spoke about them seriously or treated them with any real attention.

However, through the twists and turns of life, I came across a variety of nutritional philosophies and dietary experiments, and it was then that I truly understood that the bacteria in live fermented foods aid digestion, and experienced for myself how these bacteria help restore the body’s health.

I also remember standing in the garden among heaps of cabbages and radishes, yet all I could see were pickles beckoning and tempting me time and again. And that deep, inseparable bond between me and pickles has endured to this very day.

In our time, most people are taught from a young age that bacteria are dangerous enemies and that a refrigerator is a household essential. The notion of forgoing refrigeration to encourage bacterial growth can, one might expect, stir up fears of danger, illness, even death. People often ask:

“How do I know the bacteria that are growing are the good ones I want?”

Most people assume that transforming food safely through microbial action demands extensive knowledge and the ability to control the process – and so it is best left to experts.

In truth, the fermentation of most foods has been carried on continuously since the dawn of human history, yet this ancient practice has now been shifted onto factory production lines. Fermentation is all but vanishing from the kitchens of ordinary homes. For thousands of years, different cultures have evolved distinct fermentation techniques – by observing natural phenomena and learning through trial and error, people learned to manipulate conditions – and now these practices are quietly slipping away, on the brink of disappearing altogether.

I have been immersed in the world of fermentation for nearly twenty years, yet I have no background in microbiology or food science. I am merely a fermentation generalist – a food lover drawn back to the earth, swept up in the vortex of fermentation beyond any hope of escape, driven by appetite, a reverence for food and the desire to stay healthy.

Since becoming fascinated with fermentation, I have conducted countless experiments, spoken with a great many people about the subject, and read widely on the topic. The more experiments I have carried out and the more I have learned, the more I have come to understand just how far I still am from being an “expert”.

Those who grew up surrounded by traditional fermented foods almost certainly possess a depth and precision of knowledge far beyond my own. Others among the fermentation experts have become specialist manufacturers, developing refined techniques to maintain consistency in both production and sales quality.

There are more of them than I could ever count, and each knows far more than I do about brewing beer, making cheese, baking bread, curing salami and brewing sake. The understanding of fermentation held by microbiologists and scientists who specialise in genetics, metabolism, kinetics, population dynamics or other fermentation mechanisms is something I could never aspire to.

My knowledge of fermentation is by no means encyclopaedic either. People on five continents ferment the foods they eat locally, and the endless variations are so vast that no single person could possibly encompass them all. Still, I have been fortunate enough to hear many wonderful stories and to taste a great deal of homemade and handcrafted fermented foods.

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This is a compendium of fermentation wisdom, drawing together many people’s perspectives. Although I have tried to make the content as comprehensive as possible, the book remains far from encyclopaedic in scope. Nevertheless, my determination to write it has not wavered – I still hope to help readers distinguish between different types of fermentation and to convey how to explore fermentation and make good use of its tools to bring it into everyday life.

Some co-evolutionary relationships, deeply rooted in culture over long stretches of time, can spread across boundaries and adapt, rather than vanishing entirely.

As I explore and reflect on fermentation, the word that keeps surfacing in my mind is “culture”.

Fermentation is intimately connected with culture in many ways, echoing the multiple layers of meaning embedded in this word – from the literal sense, to the professional microbiological interpretation, to its wider connotations. We call the starter culture added to dairy to make yoghurt, or the agent that initiates fermentation, a culture.

Meanwhile, culture encompasses the totality of humanity’s languages, music, art, literature, scientific knowledge, belief systems, and agricultural and culinary techniques that we strive to pass down through the generations – and fermentation holds a central place in both of the latter.

In fact, the word “culture” derives from the Latin cultura, meaning “cultivation”. To cultivate the land and the plants, animals, fungi and bacteria that live upon it – that is the very heart of what culture is. Rediscovering our food and the pathways through which we can participate in its cultivation is the way to revive culture. Let us take action to shatter the passive, dependent role of the consumer (user) – one who is toyed with like a child – and return to being producers and creators, thereby reclaiming our dignity and our power.

Indeed, this attitude must extend beyond fermentation (though it is the inevitable biological drive within food itself) to all food. Every living creature on Earth is in constant, intimate interaction with its environment through food. Yet most humans in high-tech societies have severed this connection, with devastating consequences.

Although today’s affluent people enjoy a range of food choices that people of the past could never have dreamed of, and although individual labour today yields more food than ever before, the large-scale commercial methods and systems underpinning all of this are destroying our planet, undermining our health, and stripping us of our dignity. When it comes to food, the majority of the world’s population relies on nothing more than a fragile lifeline built on monoculture, synthetic chemicals, biotechnology and transport networks.

If we are to move towards a more harmonious way of life and build greater resilience, we must take an active part. This means making the effort to perceive the living things around us and those that make up our food – plants, animals, bacteria and fungi – and the resources we depend upon, such as water, energy, materials, tools and transport, and to forge connections with them all. It also means taking responsibility for the mess we leave behind.

We can create a better world – create better and more sustainable food choices, create a clearer awareness of our resources, and create communities built on sharing. For culture to be strong and resilient, skills, information, creativity and values must flow through it. Culture must not be reduced to a consumer’s paradise or a spectacle watched from the sidelines by others. Everyday life constantly offers us opportunities to participate and act – let us seize them.

 

III.

The cultures of the microbial world exist only as communities – and so too does human culture.

In human culture, it is food that plays the greatest role in forging these communities. We use food to invite people in for a visit, to bring the family together. Food not only welcomes newly arrived neighbours and weary travellers, but also hosts our dearest old friends. Food can unite an entire village, for the strength of many always surpasses the effort of one. Moreover, food-making typically gives rise to a division of labour among households, each specialising in what they do best, with finished products shared and exchanged among them.

Above all, fermented foods – especially fermented beverages – play a vital role in binding communities together, doing so with a power far surpassing that of ordinary foods. Not only are many festivals, rituals and celebrations centred on fermented foods – bread and wine, for instance – but fermented foods are also the oldest and most essential foods, adding value and stability to the crops that form the community’s economic foundation. In any cereal-based economy, brewers and bakers are central figures. Wine transforms perishable grapes into a stable and coveted commodity, and the relationship between cheese and milk is much the same.

Rediscovering our food means rebuilding our communities, fostering an awareness of the mutual exchange of resources and land through participation in economic specialisation, mutual aid and the division of labour. The global transport of goods consumes vast quantities of resources and inflicts devastating environmental damage. Although foods from afar can be an inspiring treat, if our lives revolve entirely around what is brought in from elsewhere, it is not only inappropriate but also destructive.

Most globally traded food comes from vast monocultures, won at the expense of forests and the diverse range of subsistence crops. When we depend entirely on the global trade system, we leave ourselves in a state of extreme vulnerability, where the slightest disruption – a natural disaster (flood, earthquake, typhoon), resource depletion (an oil crisis), or political upheaval (war, terrorism, organised crime) – could cause the whole structure to collapse.

Fermentation can be at the heart of economic revival. Localising food again means more than revitalising agriculture; it also encompasses how people once transformed and preserved produce to form part of their daily diet – in the form of bread, cheese, beer and other fermented foods.

By participating in agriculture and the production of other local foods, we create vital resources that help meet our daily basic needs. By supporting the revival of local food, we turn the flow of money back into our own communities, where it can circulate and be reinvested again and again, enabling people to produce and create, and giving them an incentive to learn essential skills.

At the same time, with less fuel and pollution in the wake of our choices, we gain access to fresher, healthier food. When our communities are able to provide more of our own food – thereby reclaiming our power and our dignity – we also reduce our collective dependence on the fragile global trade system.

 

IV.

Cultural revival means economic revival. Wherever I travel, I meet people who have chosen to take part in the work of cultural revival. Perhaps the growing number of young people choosing to farm is the best evidence of this cultural renaissance.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, the tradition of local food self-sufficiency was on the verge of dying out in the United States and in many other countries. But today, those traditions are being revived – so let us throw our full support behind them and become part of this movement.

There are many reasons to argue that a productive local food system is better than globally sourced food – it can yield fresher, more nutritious produce, while creating more local employment and greater productivity. Moreover, with less dependence on fuel and large-scale infrastructure, resources are wasted less while food security is greater.

We must forge a closer connection with the land through food, and there must be people willing to do the labour-intensive work of farming. Let us value and reward such work – and rise up to take part in it.

I do not wish to give the impression that cultural revival is some entirely new concept. There have always been people who have resisted new technology – farmers who never adopt chemical methods, those who never stop using and jealously preserve the seed stocks handed down by previous generations, those who always use horses instead of tractors, or families who never cease with their fermenting.

There will always be those seeking to reconnect with tradition, or who refuse to accept the “conveniences” of modern culture. Just as culture continually reinvents itself in unexpected ways, it can also be handed down and sustained – and it always has its roots somewhere.

Cultural revival does not, of course, mean abandoning urban and suburban life to flee to the remote countryside. We must create more harmonious ways of living where people and large-scale infrastructure are – that is, in our cities and suburbs. “Sustainability” and “resilience” must not be ideals that can only be realised in remote rural areas; rather, they must be – and can be – built into the everyday ethics of life, so that people anywhere have the capacity to put them into practice.

Nearly twenty years ago, I moved from Manhattan, where I had been living for some time, to a self-sufficient rural community in Tennessee. I am glad I did. Sometimes what you need is a dramatic shift. I was thirty years old, had just been diagnosed with an immunodeficiency virus, and wanted a wholesale change. Through a chance turn of events, I ended up at a smallholding in the woods, home to a group of eccentrics.

Personally, I believe that resettling in the countryside is both worthwhile and deeply meaningful, but this does not mean it is inherently better or more sustainable than city life. In fact, most people know that country living demands constant driving to get about (I am no exception), whereas the majority of urban dwellers do not own cars and rely largely on public transport.

Cities are where people converge, and many of the most remarkable stories of creativity and revolution unfold in cities and suburbs. Urban farming and urban homesteading are thriving ever more, especially in cities with large tracts of vacant, abandoned land. The revival of craft fermentation, too, is concentrated in cities, largely because, wherever the work of production takes place, cities control the major market dynamics.

Jane Jacobs, the great urban planner of recent decades, proposed a fascinating theory: that agricultural development spread outward from cities, rather than originating in the remote countryside.

In The Economy of Cities, Jacobs rejects the prevailing assumption that “cities are built upon a rural economic foundation” – she even derides it as “the agriculture-centred dogma”. She argues that the inherent creativity of urban life is truly the primary force that gave birth to (and continues to renew) agricultural creativity:

“The diffusion of new grain crops and animals has always been between cities… So far, the cultivation of plants and the rearing of animals have been activities carried out only in cities.”

Her fundamental idea is that people from different regions would settle at trading posts, which became dynamic environments for chance cross-breeding and selective breeding of seeds, while also offering greater opportunities for the division of labour and for the development and spread of techniques.

If Jacobs’ theory is correct, then the practice of fermentation surely also originated in cities. Rural inhabitants may often have been the custodians of what was handed down – seeds, cultures and specialist techniques – but it has mainly been urbanites who, by creating demand, have driven changes in agriculture in the countryside, such as establishing farmers’ markets and providing substantial support for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).

City dwellers can tend gardens and do fermentation work just as rural residents can. Urbanites can also tap into the deep currents of creativity in the city and the inevitable cross-boundary exchanges that exist there, and in doing so drive change in agriculture. Such change can weave together ancient wisdom on the verge of disappearing, just as it can spark innovation. In any case, cultural revival cannot be achieved through individual effort alone, nor does it stem solely from the work of the countryside.

 

V.

Much of the literature on fermentation throughout the twentieth century has claimed that production shifted from small-scale, community-based cottage industries to factories, and that improved laboratory strains – bearing the banner of “improving hygiene, safety, nutrition and efficiency” – replaced traditional starter cultures passed down through generations.

Clifford W. Hesseltine and Hua Li Wang of the USDA Fermentation Laboratory wrote in 1977:

“When we attempted to introduce Western beverages such as beer, cola and other non-alcoholic drinks to the Bantu, they refused. So we set about investigating the production process of Bantu beer in local villages. Once we understood the local process and isolated the yeasts and bacteria involved, we introduced industrialised fermentation processes and modern malting equipment. The Bantu beer produced with this modern fermentation equipment was quickly accepted by the local people… and the product, manufactured under hygienic conditions, was consistent in quality and very inexpensive.”

In my view, this notion that “hygienic, cheap, consistently good-quality mass-produced goods are superior to traditional village-made products” completely ignores the importance of the practice in village culture and economy. Meanwhile, Paul Barker in South Africa wrote:

“Traditional fermentation and many other practices have already declined in our African cultures. We must record our own culture before we are swallowed by KFC, Coca-Cola and Levi’s jeans.”

The purpose of this book is to encourage a revival of fermentation culture in our homes and communities, so that we may reclaim our food and the vast network of connections it entails. We do not only ferment grapes, barley and soybeans – we also ferment acorns, turnips, sorghum and every surplus food at hand.

The abundance of globally produced, monoculture fermentation goods is indeed wonderful, yet championing localism teaches us to make the fullest use of the rich surplus around us – acorns, for instance – and of crops that adapt and flourish with minimal human intervention, such as turnips and radishes on Tennessee farms.

This book introduces all kinds of fermented foods and how to make them. The first three chapters offer a broad overview, structured around the evolution of fermentation, its practical benefits and fundamental operational concepts. The remaining chapters are mostly divided by the type of fermented food (substrate) and by whether alcohol is a principal component of the finished product. The final few chapters offer ideas to those wishing to turn their fermentation passion into a livelihood, and explore fermentation’s applications beyond food. The book closes with a manifesto by a fermentation revivalist.

This book focuses on the process, so it departs from the conventional recipe format (except for recipes contributed by others, all of which are presented in text boxes). What I aim to convey are principles with wide applicability, rather than specific recipes alone. I have listed commonly used ratios, a variety of different ratios and process parameters, and sometimes even suggestions for flavour pairings. I have tried to explain what to do in each type of fermentation and why it is done that way.

Fermentation is even more flexible and variable than cooking, because it is something we accomplish in collaboration with other living things. In this complex relationship, the “how” and the “why” sometimes matter more than the quantities and composition of ingredients under different formulations and traditions.

I want to help you understand the “how” and the “why” of fermentation. Once you have this understanding, you will find that recipes are everywhere under your feet, and you can let your creativity run free as you explore.

– Shared Reading Programme –

– Shared Reading Time –

November 2023

– First Discussion / Online –

1 November (Wed) 19:00–20:30

WeChat Channels livestream

Guest: Sun Shan

– Second Discussion / Online –

8 November (Wed) 19:00–20:30

WeChat Channels livestream

Guests: Xu Xijing, Lin Fengyang

– Third Discussion / Online –

15 November (Wed) 19:00–20:30

WeChat Channels livestream

Guest: Ma Junli

– Fourth Discussion / Online + In-Person – 

25 November (Sat) 15:00–16:30

86 Jianguo Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing

SKP-S 2F SKP RENDEZ-VOUS

Guests: shuyu, Jing Yan

All of the above discussions can be viewed by reservation on Foodthink’s WeChat Channels

How to Join the Book Club

1. Publisher’s official online store: Buy the book

2. If you are attending the in-person event on 25 November, please be sure to select “In-Person” on the registration form. Spaces are limited and allocated on a first come, first served basis. Click “here” to register.

3. Watch the livestream: If you are unable to attend in person, you are also welcome to interact with us via WeChat Channels.

Thanks to Lakeshore Culture for authorising the full reprint of the preface

Dear readers, good news, good news!

Wanqing, a writer for Foodthink, lives in the same city as Sandor Katz, author of The Art of Fermentation. Wanqing recently got in touch with Sandor and even tried some of the fermented foods he had made.

We will soon be asking Wanqing to conduct a short interview with Sandor.

If you have read The Art of Fermentation and have a passion for fermented foods, please leave a comment below this article and tell us the question you would most like to ask Sandor. We will collect and curate the questions, then pass them on to Wanqing to translate and put to Sandor for a response.

Poster: Wan Lin