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

Description

By Sandor Katz
Trade paperback book
ISBN 9781603586283
186 pages, 7.00 x 10.00″

Not only a comprehensive recipe book of fermented and live-culture cuisine, this book also explores the history and politics of human nutrition. Fermented foods — bread, coffee, chocolate, beer, wine, cheese, miso, yogurt, and sauerkraut — are literally alive with the complex bacterial activity necessary to life itself, not deadened or destroyed by industrial food processing. Katz offers a case for microbial coexistence, reminding us that as humans we are in mutually beneficial and mutually dependent relationships with many different microbes. These microorganismsactually teach our immune systems how to function! By eating a variety of live fermented foods, we promote diversity among microbial cultures in our bodies, which is critical to our ecoimmunonutrition and the survival of larger-scale ecosystems. Wild fermentation is a way of incorporating the wild into your body, partaking of a great unmediated life force that can help us adapt to shifting conditions and lower our susceptibility to disease. The recipes are thorough and easy to follow, and include an average timeframe for preparation, a list of ingredients, and a step-by-step process. There are recipes ferments for vegetables, beans, diary foods, breads, grains, beers, and vinegars. The lively dialogue throughout is both informative and entertaining.