Reddit reviews The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from around the World
We found 31 Reddit comments about The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from around the World. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Ships from Vermont
If you move the decimal over. This is about 1,000 in books...
(If I had to pick a few for 100 bucks: encyclopedia of country living, survival medicine, wilderness medicine, ball preservation, art of fermentation, a few mushroom and foraging books.)
Medical:
Where there is no doctor
Where there is no dentist
Emergency War Surgery
The survival medicine handbook
Auerbach’s Wilderness Medicine
Special Operations Medical Handbook
Food Production
Mini Farming
encyclopedia of country living
square foot gardening
Seed Saving
Storey’s Raising Rabbits
Meat Rabbits
Aquaponics Gardening: Step By Step
Storey’s Chicken Book
Storey Dairy Goat
Storey Meat Goat
Storey Ducks
Storey’s Bees
Beekeepers Bible
bio-integrated farm
soil and water engineering
Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation
Food Preservation and Cooking
Steve Rinella’s Large Game Processing
Steve Rinella’s Small Game
Ball Home Preservation
Charcuterie
Root Cellaring
Art of Natural Cheesemaking
Mastering Artesian Cheese Making
American Farmstead Cheesemaking
Joe Beef: Surviving Apocalypse
Wild Fermentation
Art of Fermentation
Nose to Tail
Artisan Sourdough
Designing Great Beers
The Joy of Home Distilling
Foraging
Southeast Foraging
Boletes
Mushrooms of Carolinas
Mushrooms of Southeastern United States
Mushrooms of the Gulf Coast
Tech
farm and workshop Welding
ultimate guide: plumbing
ultimate guide: wiring
ultimate guide: home repair
off grid solar
Woodworking
Timberframe Construction
Basic Lathework
How to Run A Lathe
Backyard Foundry
Sand Casting
Practical Casting
The Complete Metalsmith
Gears and Cutting Gears
Hardening Tempering and Heat Treatment
Machinery’s Handbook
How to Diagnose and Fix Everything Electronic
Electronics For Inventors
Basic Science
Chemistry
Organic Chem
Understanding Basic Chemistry Through Problem Solving
Ham Radio
AARL Antenna Book
General Class Manual
Tech Class Manual
MISC
Ray Mears Essential Bushcraft
Contact!
Nuclear War Survival Skills
The Knowledge: How to rebuild civilization in the aftermath of a cataclysm
The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from around the World is pretty good if you're interested in learning how to make your own yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut and the like. Save you a couple bucks and impress your friends and the ladies/men with your earthly hobby.
The Art Of Fermentation should be on everybody's shelves.
Nice article, btw. Some great stuff in there on fermentation in a warm, humid climate, where it seems (from a Northern perspective) that foods ferment way too quickly.
The Art of Fermentation
http://www.amazon.com/Art-Fermentation-Depth-Exploration-Essential/dp/160358286X
I live in the heart of the south and have access to an amazing amount of fresh produce. I'm always experimenting.
As a culture, we're just beginning to feel around the edges of the hugely important role that gut flora/our microbiome plays in our health. It seems like almost every day some new and exciting information is coming out regarding this area of knowledge.
At our house, we do a lot of ferments. We've done kombucha, milk and water kefir, lacto-pickles, sourdough culture and homebrewed beer. We also have a friend that has started a local business making amazing sauerkrauts.
If anybody is interested in this stuff, I'd highly recommend Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz. Both excellent books with background info and recipes.
Fermentation can seem unsafe/intimidating, but I've been surprised at how simple it is to do, and how few issues there are in regards to food safety (the whole reason people started fermenting food in the first place was to keep it from spoiling, after all).
If you're interested in learning more about fermenting, Sandor "Sandorkraut" Katz is a name you should search. He's kind of "the" guy for fermenting.
His Website
His most recent book
The books is a great resource and one of my favorites. Very inspiring to try new stuff. I'm actually going to see him at a workshop he's doing in Rhode Island late this month. Should be awesome.
Good luck!
I'll second this and additionally suggest learning how to ferment foods yourself, cause it's stupidly easy and super cheap. The Art Of Fermentation is a great book to help you get started if you want to understand how it works, but it's not necessary.
Usually I just make my own probiotic drinks by fermenting random fruits/herbs + ginger using probiotic pills (like S. Boulardii) as starter cultures, and 'feeding' it some soluble fibers. Not quite as simple as just taking a pill, but more likely to work effectively given there'll be a higher bacterial count in a glass of liquid than in a pill, and liquid helps the bacteria survive your stomach acid a bit more easily as well.
about 5 years ago, I was given a copy of the Art of Fermentation because I gave the author permission to use one of my photos. I've sort of been interested in fermentation ever since, but besides the odd batch of pickles and sauerkraut, hadn't done anything else. I decided to try my hand at making miso. I used Japanese soybeans, American made Koji, and Korean sea salt. Ended up with about 1 liter of miso packed away in a corner of my pantry. I'll see what it's like in 3 months.
Hi! I'm the resident SCD whack-a-loon!
No secret handshake; it either works or it doesn't. Some data to suggest its utility:
>RESULTS: All 20 patients demonstrated a decrease in symptoms and reduction in medication use. Six patients have entered complete clinical remission, discontinued all medication, and maintained remission for five to 80 months. The most rapid response in this category belongs to a 28 year old male who presented with daily fevers of 40 degrees C, bloody diarrhea six times per day, a serum albumen of 2.6 g/dl, ESR of 90 and oxalic acid excretion of 164mg per day, despite the use of azathioprine 100 mg per day and prednisone 40mg per day. This patient achieved complete clinical and laboratory remission during the first 60 days and has maintained remission for three years. For the remaining 14 patients, reduction in symptoms scores were from 90 percent to 40percent (mean reduction of 65 percent). Mean prednisone dose (6 patients) decreased from 17 mg to 5 mg, mean dose of azathioprine or 6-mercaptopurine (3patients) decreased from 100 mg per day to 33 mg per day, mean dose of5-aminosalicylate preparations was reduced by 33 percent, mean ESR decreased from 66 to 32, mean serum albumen increased from 3.2 g/dl to 4.1 g/dl and mean intestinal permeability index (differential lactulose/mannitol absorption) decreased from 0.275 to 0.074. Eleven patients responded to the initial SCDand nine proceeded to other dietary interventions. All nine returned non-glutenous starches to their diets. Yeast illumination was the diet of choice for five, complete milk limitation for five, and elimination of nuts for four. Sixteen patients received fish oil supplements, 9 received glutamine and MPS supplements.
Similarly, there's a new pediatric study out- still only E-pub ahead of print.
>Seven children with Crohn's on the SCD™ and on no immunosuppressive medications were retrospectively evaluated. Duration of the dietary therapy ranged from five months to thirty months, with an average of 14.6 ± 10.8 months. Although the exact time of symptom resolution could not be determined through chart review, all symptoms were notably resolved at a routine clinic visit three months after initiating the diet. Each patient's laboratory indices, including serum albumin, C - reactive protein, hematocrit and stool calprotectin, either normalized or significantly improved during follow-up clinic visits. This chart review suggests that the SCD™ and other low complex carbohydrate diets may be possible therapeutic options for pediatric Crohn's disease. Further prospective studies are required to fully assess the safety and efficacy of the SCD™, or any other low complex specific carbohydrate diets in pediatric patients with Crohn's disease.
I personally favor a low-carb diet with lots of SCD-type yogurt. See also Lutz's "Life Without Bread," including the chapter with charts on its efficacy in managing colitis.
That said, plenty of books are out there with suggestions as to how to use diet as a complementary approach to managing IBD; I have heard good things about Hunter's "Inflammatory Bowel Disease," but have yet to read it. Similarly, there are a handful of "Paleo" diet books, all of which exclude grains much like Gottschall's SCD. I would opine that fermented foods would be good to add to any IBD diet, and Katz's Art of Fermentation would be another useful reference.
There are also vegetarian/vegan approaches, about which I know much less.
As of December, I'll have been on 100% diet-controlled Crohn's (biopsy-confirmed) for 6 years with no meds. No symptoms, blood panels and fecal calprotectin are all well within norms.
I recently got Tartine #3 when it was posted here for 5$ a few weeks ago. In it there is a recipe for Oat Porridge bread, this website has the recipe basically. I also have Sandor Katz' The Art of Fermentation, and it in it is a technique for making a fermented oatmeal, where you basically just do a 2:1 ratio (or more if you like a thinner porridge) of rolled oats to water and let it sit out over night or longer. Its good, you get a tangy taste to the oats and I find it to get a really creamy texture. So what I did was combine the two. I took the suggested amount of oats and water for the porridge bread in Tartine, then just left it out for a week, stirring once a day. By the time I did the bread it smelled reallllly great, very yeasty and sour. I blackslopped some of it into the initial dough of the bread, then cooked and incorporated it as per instructions.
Came out well, but I used a little bit more water than suggested in the porridge and so I probably should have added a bit more flour into the dough. As I said, it stuck to the banneton and deflated a lot, so it ended up more of a disk than a boule, but even so, I got a good bit of oven spring. Taste wise, the bread was very good. Well soured, and very hearty with all the oats in it. As they mention in the recipe, the crumb is super tender, and this bread holds up very well, I was eating it 5 days later and it still felt just as fresh as when I first made it, barring a bit if dryness where the cut was. Really an excellent loaf, just kind of hard to work with and very easy to over hydrate if you aren't careful.
For anyone interested in going further with fermentation experiments, I would humbly like to recommend Sandor Katz's The Art of Fermentation. Both his recipes and the philosophy behind what he does are excellent. When the zombie apocalypse comes and there's no more refrigeration and community relationships are twisted and desperate, you'll be glad you own this book.
I'm late to this party, but let me chime in with what I've learned over the years of being a fermentation fan. Now, I don't know what they do in labs, but growing cultures in labs is a fairly modern development anyway.
But, outside of the lab, how do you maintain a consistent strain? Generally, you don't. ;)
Because it doesn't matter if the English Ale Yeast we have today is genetically equivalent to what was used 100 years ago, as long as it's a strain of yeast that makes something that tastes like English Ale, right? The point is the product, not the particular strain of microbe.
Generally, people are receiving their cultures from others who are already producing it; those who know what the product is supposed to BE. Smell, taste, texture/mouthfeel can be very precise tools. If a particular culture comes up different, they either toss it or propagate it based on what they view as the ideal product.
Studies have shown that the particular makeup of sourdough cultures, for instance, can depend on the ambient temperature and "rhythm" of feeding, the flour used, the water used, etc.
So, the consistency comes down to human tradition. One thing people can do is attempt to control all aspects of the fermentation. The same ingredients, from the same sources, used in the same processes, in the same environment, made in the same rhythm. This can't stop random mutations, but it provides consistent selection pressure and can provide a better baseline to notice when things have changed.
Anyone who's attempted to maintain a culture long term "in the wild" has had a batch go off. You learn to keep backups frozen, dried, or multiple concurrent batches to account for that.
If you'd like more reading on the topic, Sandor Katz has an entire section in The Art of Fermentation titled "Fermentation as a Coevolutionary Force" that's more or less related. The book as a whole is a fantastic resource for fermentation enthusiasts.
Basically any vegetable can be fermented. Even garlic. Whether you like the taste is another matter of your own preference. But basically anything, if done correctly, can be fermented.
If you're looking for specific recipes, check out Katz's The Art of Fermentation and Fallon's Nourishing Traditions.
I have found The Art of Fermentation very helpful. Link:https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/160358286X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468466175&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=art+of+fermentation&dpPl=1&dpID=51FvDZZcZ3L&ref=plSrch
I'd take no more than half a normal glass (1dl) of vinegary stuff and a peel a half-centimeter thick scoby for the new batch. Save the rest, liquid and scobies as well! You can use it in case of mold on your production scobies, can make kombucha candy from extra scobies, use the liquid as vinegar for salads and if there's no sugar left, it makes a great cleaning fluid.
edit: candy recipe: http://epistlepublishingblog.mymiddleearth.com/2013/03/23/kombucha-ginger-candy/
I originally found the idea in "The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World" by Sandor Ellix Katz , here's an excerpt:
"Nata is a candy made in the Philippines from the thick layer of cellulose that develops on the surface during vinegar fermentation of coconut water (nata de coco) or a pineapple juice infusion (nata de pina). I’ve used the nata method with a kombucha mother, and the result was a sweet, squishy candy, barely sour, with a hint of tea flavor, which almost everyone who tried it, kids included, liked. The process is extremely simple. A jun mother or mother-of-vinegar could be used with exactly the same process.
Take a kombucha mother, at least ½ inch/1 cm thick, rinse it, and cut it with a sharp knife into small bite-size pieces. Soak the kombucha pieces in cold water for 10 minutes. Drain, rinse, and soak again. Then transfer the kombucha pieces to a pot, cover with water, and boil for 10 minutes. Drain, rinse, and boil again for 10 more minutes. The reason for the repeated soaking and boiling is to remove as much acidity as possible from the kombucha mother. You may find that you prefer it more acidic, with fewer rinses and boilings. My friend Billy tried it after tasting mine and omitted the rinsing and boiling altogether. He preferred the flavor with the acidity intact. It reminded him of apple pie. “It’s my new favorite way to enjoy the kombucha!” he announced. “It’s better than drinking it.”
The nata method of candying the kombucha pieces is to cover them with sugar, roughly as much sugar as kombucha cubes. Then heat this mixture and boil the kombucha pieces in the syrup that forms, for about 15 minutes, then remove from the heat, and allow to slowly cool. After cooling, drain off any remaining syrup, crisp up in the oven for a few minutes or air-dry, and enjoy kombucha candy.
Billy loved it so much he invented his own method, without de-acidifying the kombucha and without cooking it, except at the end to dry it out. (For a live-culture kombucha candy you could air-dry, or use a dehydrator instead.) In a bowl, he alternated layers of sugar and still-acidified kombucha, then poured a cooled sugar syrup (also with butter and vanilla) over them and left it marinating overnight. In the morning he dried them, along with the extra sugar syrup, in a low oven. Finally, he sprinkled the crystallized sugar syrup on top “for a caramel flavor.”"
(the book: http://www.amazon.com/Art-Fermentation-Depth-Exploration-Essential/dp/160358286X )
Sandor Katz has a book called The Art of Fermentation. In it he describes several different kinds of fermented meat and fish
He also argues in general about the benefits of fermented food through consumption of the bacterial loads thus induced.
Book here. I have it and it is pretty good.
This is a very traditional way of doing things and very valid. If I were you, I'd read up on traditional meadmaking and look into some pitchable kveik strains (or other traditional strains that will give you this ability):
Probably the best resource. http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Fermentation-Exploration-Essential/dp/160358286X
Very little emphasis on equipment, which should also be helpful.
My recommendations depend on what you consider "pickling."
There's the notion of canning-type pickling, where you put the vegetable (typically) in a brine, often flavored with spices, and preserve them by canning; sterilizing the jars and contents so that it's shelf-stable. Most "pickles" you buy in the store fall under this definition. Additionally, these recipes are pretty standard, and have gone through exhaustive formulating and testing to ensure safety. I personally would not trust online resources for canning unless you are 100% certain of their validity. (Whereas my next distinction is far more forgiving and open to experimentation.)
For this, I can think of no better book than the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.
On the other hand, most non-Western cultures, including ours until the Cold War or so, consider pickling to involve some sort of preserving involving selecting and managing bacteria to preserve the food. Usually via some form of fermentation, though not exclusively so. Think kimchi or (non-canned) sauerkraut. Cucumber pickles are a paradox, common and popular in both canned and fermented categories. A common non-fermented, non-canned preserved item would be preserved lemons, say. Or honey-preserved garlic.
The best book for fermentation (and other non-canned preservations) is Sandor Ellix-Katz's The Art of Fermentation.
Read The Art of Fermentation
edit check out Sandor Katz's blog. He wrote the above mentioned book.
It's important to note: our culture has decided that all bacteria is bad. We kill all the bacteria on our vegetables, in the water, and in our milk. So, you aren't able to ferment foods unless you take a few things into account. You must use spring water, not tap, to make bread. You must use organic vegetables and honey to make fermented foods, not standard foods. You must get raw milk from healthy free range cows to make fermented foods. If you've failed in fermenting things at home, it is because your ingredients are coming from an industrial system that has decided that all bacteria is bad.
If you're on a tight budget, buy the organic foods and spring water for fermentation only. You can eat non-organic foods raw or not fermented. In some ways, you can save money. There are books on baking your own bread, so my baking yourself, you can reduce the cost.
If you are interested in that stuff you should check out the book The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz if you haven't. It's got a lot of good info in it.
I too love what people like Beyond Meat are doing, and I think it's definitely a critical part of food in the future. I'm working on my masters and just doing consulting gigs in the mean time, but I would love to work for a company doing stuff like that.
In terms of software in the food space I think that there is going to be a lot of application in food processing automation. It's something that is a difficult problem to solve, especially when taking manual dexterity of robotics into account, plus cost. Software wise I think it would be really cool to apply image recognition to every day items that need to be processed (take a potato for example) and be able to properly assess size and shape and create instructions for cutting (diced, sliced etc.) for an automated system. Basically just a more human eye for an automated kitchen worker.
In that kind of respect I think we are much further ahead software wise than we are hardware wise, but I feel like that is going to change rapidly over the next 5-10 years as more quick service restaurants push towards cutting costs, of which labor is almost always the highest.
I'm using a Sandor Katz method from the Art of Fermintation. Basically, I stuffed a half-gallon jar full of radish (with greens). Added about 6 tablespoons salt with water and a little garlic.
That USDA bulletin is great! I'm definitely giving that a read through. Yeah it's really is hard finding info on any type of koji other than for Sake or Miso. I wound up using a combination of shoyu and soy koji recipes in Sandor Katz' "The Art of Fermentation" book and the directions that came with the shoyu koji-kin I bought from GEM Cultures.
http://gemcultures.com/soy_cultures.htm
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Fermentation-Depth-Exploration-Essential/dp/160358286X/
I have drawn on some ideas from Joseph Needham's "Science and Civilization in China Vol 6-5: Biology and Biotechnology Part 5 - Fermentations and Food Science." It's a treasure trove of information about the history of fermentation technology in China and other East Asian cultures. The book has recipes and techniques though they have to be interpreted using modern methods and measurements which can be tricky.
https://monoskop.org/images/f/f1/Needham_Joseph_Science_and_Civilisation_in_China_Vol_6-5_Biology_and_Biological_Technology_Fermentations_and_Food_Science.pdf
Good luck on the peanuts! Looks like they successfully used them in the USDA booklet so it should work in theory.
Yeah the immersion circulator works great and koji is usually ready in about 40 hours but I am frustrated by having to use an 8x11 baking dish which limits me to about 2 lbs of koji at a time. I'm guessing from your pictures you have a cabinet setup with rows of wooden trays for incubation? Can you share some pics of what that looks like?
I was thinking about doing this cooler + aquarium heater setup but have also been intrigued about building a wood cabinet with trays.
http://fermup.com/incubators/
I would highly recommend The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz.
He dives deeply into just about all types of fermentation. It’s a really interesting read and my go-to reference.
Sorry for the delayed response!
Kefir has been the most wonderful source of probiotics for me. My lactose-intolerant wife has been able to drink it without problem. I've actually even heard of people being able to cure their lactose intolerance with the stuff. If I drink as little as a cup of homemade kefir every day, I have zero G.I. tract problems. I've noticed that if I stop using it for long periods of time, they frequently return. If I were to select one thing to try, it'd be kefir. The best source of information on kefir came from a series of webpages (1, 2, 3)from a guy named Dom. He has a ridiculously crazy sense of humor, but he's done more experimentation with kefir than I've seen anywhere else. I'd encourage you to buy some kefir grains off of Craigslist for $5 and experiment with it for a while.
I hope this helps. Please feel free to PM me if you have any other questions.
You might be interested in The Art Of Fermentation.
For pickles and other preserves, I tend to refer to Sandor Katz's The Art of Fermentation
Frank and Beans!
I have a whole wish list dedicated to books so you can choose from there, or get me this one which would make me so happy I would dance like Dick Van Dyke.
:)
Hangon that's BS, some fermenting foods are exactly what we evolved to love - the overripe fruit contains shedloads of sugars that are great. Some forms of fermentation greatly increase the bioavailability of certain nutrients. That's all vague and hand-wavy, so I'll recommend Sandor Ellix Katz' book The Art of Fermentation as it is exceedingly well-cited, bloody interesting, and tells me to drink beer. I think...
/u/Project-MKULTRA is using a recipe from Wild Fermentation. Sandor Katz is one of, if not the leading expert on fermentation. NY Times article on Sandor Katz His book outlines the ins and outs of all different types of fermentation. The Art if Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from around the World
So, to answer your question, you could read or reference it. It will explain to you why the stirring and why the airlocks.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/160358286X?pc_redir=1404818571&robot_redir=1