Fermentation & Culture

Nourishment, growth, synergy, mystery, tradition, & renewal

Weekend ferments: Mango soda, ginger beer, ginger starter, sourdough starter, milk kefir, sauerkraut.

Like so many others, I started making sourdough bread for the first time during the lockdown stage of the pandemic. Endlessly stuck at home with even our local lakefront parks padlocked shut, it was a great new project: Interesting, engaging, skill-building, and revelatory. Who knew that it’s actually pretty easy to make top-shelf, whole grain “artisan”-style bread with only some basic tools (kitchen scale, bread thermometer, etc.), good quality flour (I’m loyal to Janie’s Mill), and sufficient time at home? (more than plentiful for those of us in the “laptop class” at the time). I certainly didn’t. And finding that out was a lot of fun in an otherwise dismally oppressive time.