Fervor for Fermentation

Lea Burkenroad

ILS 252

12/14/11

Fervor For Fermentation

            I have never considered myself to be good at science.  I never took a liking to memorization and had trouble understanding mitosis and meiosis in middle school.  My twin brother was always the one who easily excelled in science and had a real passion for it.  The first time I encountered the art and science of fermentation was through a friend.  She told me about kombucha and raved about its digestive health benefits and how easy it is to make.  “The process of fermentation makes food more digestible and nutritious.  Live, unpasteurized, fermented foods also carry beneficial bacteria directly to our digestive systems, where they exist symbiotically, breaking down food and aiding digestion” (Katz 2).  I recall telling my mom about it and unsurprisingly, she was worried about the danger of the risks of contamination and urged me to make sure everything was really clean during the process.  I was just getting involved with Slow Food UW at the time and found out from the co-leader that she could give me a SCOBY.  I remember waiting and waiting for it, not really knowing what I was waiting for.  When it was finally ready, she asked me to bring a jar and we did the transfer after a Slow Food family dinner night.  My friend that had previous experience brewing kombucha in the past showed me the steps to the process and after the first time around I felt confident brewing a batch independently.  Although kombucha did not prove to be a “gateway” to fermented foods, thinking back to this experience reminds me of the social and cultural values that undoubtedly surround fermentation.  I believe that the art, science and culture of fermentation are nothing without storytelling and the exchange of knowledge, food, and live cultures.  Yet, life is nothing without these microbial cultures.  “Not only are we dependent upon microorganisms, we are their descendants: According to the fossil record, all forms of life on Earth spring from bacterial origins” (Katz).

My interest in fermentation was inspired once again when I lived at a housing cooperative.  I would watch people experiment in the kitchen with various fermented foods from kimchee to kefir to sauerkraut and they would often make vast quantities and share their experiments with the house.  Although people would often be doing their experiments individually, it was always an activity that was open for others to take part in and ask questions about.  I was also inspired to partake more in fermentation through FH King Students For Sustainable Agriculture.  The former program director is another fermentation mentor who inspired me to experiment with fermentation.  He lives in one of the most cramped spaces I’ve seen in Madison, yet he uses every inch of his home for something productive.  He has a “fermentation station” filled with things such as kombucha with SCOBYs’ larger than any I’ve seen, banana vinegar, yarrow beer, mead and sauerkraut.  He is always offering tastes of his experiments and for my honest opinion.  He also feels strongly that by eating fermented foods, his health is improved.  “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” (Fallon xi).  He led a workshop for FH King this past summer that left me with the idea that I could go home and ferment vegetables simply with salt and water.  I love the sour taste of things like pickles and felt that there were certain vegetables that I would prefer the taste of if they were fermented rather than cooked in some fashion or eaten raw.

I acquired “Wild Fermentation”, by Sandor Katz and decided that I could use this project as a reason and motivation for experimenting with fermentation using various recipes.  I began with a rye sourdough starter because I liked the idea of baking my own bread using yeast from my own environment; yeast that can be resilient and sustained.  It begins simply with flour, water, and in my case with some plums because Katz suggested that unwashed, organic fruit has some yeast on it that is drawn to the fruit’s sweetness.  I stirred the mixture vigorously and covered it and let it sit in a warm place.  I attended to it at least once daily for multiple days and started to notice bubbles.  This is a sign that the yeast is active.  It felt like magic.  I could smell sourdough bread when I put my nose even remotely close to the bowl and was ecstatic that wild yeast had made its way into my batter from the air in my house.  I continued to add flour to the mixture for a few more days to “feed” my starter.  When it was ready to use, I saved some of it for future use and used the rest to make onion-caraway rye bread.  This bread took two days to make and ended up extremely sour and dense.  Although I liked the taste of it, I wanted it to be less moist and a bit less sour.  I spoke to some folks and came to the conclusion that I should alter the recipe by adding more than exclusively rye flour to get less dense bread.  The beauty of this experiment is that my starter was still alive, so I could use it again and again indefinitely unless I stopped caring for it.  From there I went on to experiment with kombucha using different kinds of teas and varying ratios of sugar, kimchee, coconut, dairy and water kefir, sauerkraut and various mixtures of vegetables and herbs.

Only when I thought about it did I realize how the process of fermentation could be a model and metaphor for my definition of sustainability and a tool for making the world a better place.  It is about preserving life by caring for it, carefully watching it grow, experimenting with it, experiencing it firsthand and as a result caring for it even more.  It is also about reproducing life and passing life on to others along with the experiences and knowledge surrounding it.  Fermentation gives people the opportunity to connect with science via the process of life itself (for example to make kombucha you’re watching it work its magic as days go by but also participating in the process by interacting with it through your senses). “In 1857, Pasteur published the results of his studies and concluded that fermentation is associated with the life and structural integrity of the yeast cells rather than with their death and decay” (El Mansi et al 3).  By connecting more with live processes such as these, we can become more appreciative of life, more connected to our environment (noticing your sauerkraut tastes different when you make it in different locations) more connected to the food that we are fermenting and less wasteful (for example of food we might otherwise throw away).

Fermentation is an ancient tradition.  “Fermentation has been known and practiced by mankind since prehistoric times, long before the underlying scientific principles were understood”  (El Mansi et al. 1).  That such a useful technology should arise by accident will come as no surprise to those people who live in tropical and subtropical regions, where as Marjory Stephenson put it, “every sandstorm is followed by a spate of fermentation in the cooking pot” (Bryce et al 1).  Sometimes, we can’t figure out exactly how things work, why they happen when they do, or where their roots lie.  In the case of fermentation, we know that it is an ancient practice and one that I strongly believe should be revived to strengthen or health as well as our culture, community and passion for life.

 

 

WORKS CITED

El-Mansi, E.M.T., C.F.A. Bryce, A.L. Demain, and A.R. Alman. Fermentation Microbiology and Biotechnology . 2. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2007. 1-4. Web. <http://books.google.com/books?id=8gG1NaLmPkoC&printsec=frontcover

Katz, Sandor Ellix. Wild Fermentation, The Flavor, Nutrition, And Craft Of Live-culture Foods. Chelsea Green Pub Co, 2003.