Adventures of a Wannabe Fermento

About 10 weeks ago, I embarked on a culinary adventure in fermentation.  It began when I received a ceramic fermenting crock and a book by Sandor Ellix Katz titled The Art of Fermentation from my Aunt Janet.  The book is a masterpiece that is not so much a cookbook as it is an instructional manual, anthropological refresher, microbiological refresher, and cultural manifesto.  Katz explains what fermentation is, how it pertains to us culturally, how it has evolved as a method of food preservation throughout history, outlines the many health benefits of consuming fermented foods and gives instructions on how to ferment everything under the sun.  Now, I know what you're thinking.  At the mere mention of the word fermentation, most people picture that green stuff that grows on your leftovers when you leave them in the fridge too long.  We have a great fear in our culture of aging food outside of refrigeration and most view the concept of leaving food outside of refrigeration to encourage bacterial growth as a dangerous threat to health.  But, as Katz points out, nearly one-third of all food eaten by human beings worldwide is fermented.  Things like pickles, bread, cheese, yogurt, kefir, tempeh, sour cream, salami, vinegar, soy sauce, condiments, chocolate, coffee, beer, and wine are all examples of common fermented foods.  Most of the processes by which we make these products are ancient rituals that humans have been performing since the dawn of history, but because in our times these processes are largely relegated to large scale factory food production, we have become so disconnected from the process that we fear it.

Fermentation in this context is defined as the anaerobic transformation of food by various bacteria, fungi, and the enzymes they produce.  Fermentation is inextricably linked to culture, both in the literal sense of the starters we add to the crock to initiate fermentation, and in the broader sense in terms of our culture as humans.  The word culture comes from a Latin word that means "to cultivate" and our cultivation of the land and its plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria are essential to human culture.   In our bodies, bacteria outnumber cells by more than 10 to1 and the majority of these bacteria are found in our intestines.  They allow us to digest and break down nutrients more efficiently, they regulate the balance between energy use and storage, they produce necessary nutrients for us like B and K vitamins, modulate expression of some of our genes, bind with and remove a variety of toxic compounds in foods, and provide us with much of our immunity since many of our immune cells reside in the linings of the gut.  Consuming fermented foods, particularly those containing live bacterial cultures, helps to keep the bacterial populations in our intestines healthy, which allows us to maximize the benefits to our health.

Foods and beverages fermented by lactic acid bacteria and then consumed without further cooking have profound healing aspects.  Living lactic acid bacteria has always been present in food, but is particularly important now due to the multitude of chemicals present in our lives.  Antibiotics prescribed to fight illness wage a war on our intestinal bacteria because they kill a broad spectrum of bacteria rather than targeting a specific problematic bacterial strain.  This is why a doctor will often recommend taking a probiotic in conjunction with an antibiotic.  Even without taking antibiotics, we are exposed to them and also to chlorine and antibacterial cleaning agents through our water supply.  According to Katz, the problem with killing 99.9 percent of bacteria is that most of them protect us from the few that make us sick.  This exposure leaves our intestinal flora diminished and unbalanced, making us more susceptible to infection and disease.  The key to reestablishing and rebuilding healthy levels of bacteria can come in the form of a probiotic supplement, or in the form of fermented foods containing live active cultures.

Probiotic therapy has been found to have a documented and quantifiable measure of success in treating and preventing diseases of the digestive tract such as IBS, inflammatory bowel syndrome, diarrhea, constipation, and even colon cancer.  They have been shown to reduce incidence and duration of common colds and upper respiratory illnesses, and have been shown to improve outcomes and prevent infections in critically ill intensive care patients.  They improve liver function in cirrhosis patients and they increase CD4 cell counts in patients with HIV.  They reduce blood pressure and anxiety.  They can reduce dental caries in children, treat periodontal disease, treat allergies, urinary tract infections, prevent kidney stones, and prevent various types of cancers.  There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that consuming a diet rich in live cultures along with fatty acids and devoid of artificial ingredients, trans-fats, sugar, gluten, or casein can improve the symptoms of autism.  According to  a review in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, probiotics like those present in fermented foods, may prove to be one of our most effective tools against new and emerging pathogens that continue to defy modern medicine in the 21st century.  Still yukked out by the idea of consuming fermented foods?  Not me.  I'm sold.

So next the challenge was to decide what to ferment first.  The possibilities are nearly endless.  There are instructions in the book for fermenting fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, seeds, nuts, meat, cheese, fish, and instructions for making yogurt, kefir, butter, buttermilk, wine, hard cider, or mead.  My head was spinning with the possibilities.  My Grandpa Millard has been making sauerkraut all his life and I have a really clear memory of having some of his sauerkraut on a hot dog when I visited him in Logan, Utah as a kid.  It is one of those memories that is so oddly specific that it seems my brain somehow knew that it would someday have some relevance.  So then it was decided, my first ferment would be sauerkraut.  Sauerkraut is the product of a wild fermentation, meaning that the fermentation is based on organisms that are already present on the food.  If you are fermenting grapes, yeast will initiate the fermentation, and in the case of milk or vegetables, the fermentation will be carried out by lactic acid bacteria.  This is also referred to as a lacto-fermentation.  Wild fermentation does not require the use of a starter culture, which introduces specific isolated organisms or established communities of organisms to the substrate.   By contrast, making yogurt or sourdough bread does require the use of a specific starter culture.  I picked up 2 large heads of cabbage grown by Blackwell Roots of Cabot, VT, some non-iodized Kosher salt, some fennel, and a few juniper berries and began my first fermentation experiment.

I washed the cabbage in non-chlorinated water then finely shredded it, saving some of the larger outer leaves whole. Then I began packing the shredded cabbage into the crock along with about 2 Tbsp non-iodized pickling or Kosher salt, 1 Tbsp fennel, and 1 Tbsp juniper berries mixing, bruising, and crushing it with my hands as I added each layer.  It is important to pack it down as tightly as possible, pushing the air out.  I then placed the large intact leaves of cabbage over the top of the shredded cabbage and added enough non-chlorinated water to the crock to cover it all.  It is important that the water be non-chlorinated and the salt non-iodized since both will slow, change, or inhibit bacterial growth.  Finally, I placed the weights on top to keep it submerged and gave it one final push down to remove any excess air bubbles, sinking the weights below the water line.

I placed the top on the crock and added water to the gutter surrounding the lid to create an air-tight seal.  This water level will need to be monitored and refilled throughout the fermentation process.  If you don't have a fermentation crock, then you can use any large, non-reactive container.  For the seal, place a bag filled with water on top of the cabbage in your container, ensuring that the sides of the bag are making good contact with the rim of the container.   By excluding air, you can encourage the growth of the lactic acid bacteria while discouraging growth of undesirable mold or yeast.  When sealed this way, the ferment gurgles and burps for several weeks.  I particularly enjoyed this phase of the fermentation.  There is something fun about having a gurgling, burping jar of liveliness on your counter top.  It was a bit like having another pet in the house.  The exclusion of air is not necessary, however.  Many fermentos do not aim for an airtight seal and instead just scrape the top layer of the ferment off the top, discard it, and consume the rest.  My Grandpa does it that way. 

The final step is the longest and requires some patience.  The ideal fermentation temperature ranges between 50 and 65 degrees Fahrenheit.  Generally, the warmer it is, the faster your fermentation process will be.  Salt also influences fermentation speed, so the saltier it is, the slower it ferments.  The length of time that you choose to allow your substrate to ferment is largely depended on personal taste.  Some prefer the mild flavor and crunchy texture of a shorter, more mild ferment while others like a more mature, longer-aged version.  Some view it in a strictly utilitarian way based on the optimal number of bacteria present.  The concentration of lactic acid bacteria present typically follows a bell curve building to a peak, then declining at high levels of acidity.    Katz recommends sampling the ferment at various stages of the process and judging it to be ready based on your own personal tastes.  I sampled mine at 4 weeks, then again at 6 weeks, but found the flavor and texture to be perfect between 8 and 9 weeks.  At this point you can either pull it all out of the crock, transfer it to jars, and store it in the fridge or just take out of the crock a jarful at a time, leaving the rest in the crock to continue fermenting.