Page 75 - The Hunt - Winter 2023/24

The tangy fruits of fermentation: kimchi, radish salad and white and red sauerkraut.
All Things Fermented
From pastries to kimchi, beer to pickles, yogurt to wine, it all starts with yeasts and bacteria.
It’s amazing how much of our daily food and drink owes its beginnings to fermentation, whether we’re creating it or preserving it. That holds true whether fermentation takes place at home or in restaurants, wineries, breweries, bakeries or pizza parlors. Some of Alphonse Lee’s most detailed and arduous culinary work involves converting heads of Napa cabbage into tangy kimchi via fermentation. “It’s a lot of work,” says the owner of Kalbi Asian Bistro in Wilmington. “To layer it with salt and water—salt brine—you have to do it leaf by leaf. My mother and I just finished making a 170-pound batch of kimchi yesterday.”
Scott Weymiller uses standard commercial yeasts for his rolls, baguettes and pain au chocolat. “When commercial yeast gets started, you’re on the bullet train,” says the baker, who works at La Baguette Magique
in West Chester. “Sourdough bread is another matter.”
By Roger Morris
But even making sourdough is less of a risk than fermenting grapes or other fruits to make wine. “Whether you’re using carboys in the basement or open-top fermenters in a winery, the smaller the batches, the cleaner your equipment and fermenters have to be,” says Anthony Vietri, owner of Va La Vineyards
in Avondale.
Fermentation is defined as the chemical breakdown of a substance by bacteria, yeasts or other microorganisms, typically
involving effervescence (bubbles) and giving off heat. We most associate fermentation with the production of alcoholic drinks, generally beginning with starches or sugar. We add baking to the list when yeast is involved.
One of fermentation’s foremost popularizers is writer Sandor Katz. Historically, he notes, fermentation was employed to safely preserve food that would otherwise decay. “Fermentation extends the lifespans of many foods, among them cabbage
and other vegetables (sauerkraut and pickles), milk (cheese and yogurt), meat (salami) and grapes (wine),” he writes in his wonderful 2021 food travelogue, Sandor Katz’s Fermentation Journeys: Recipes, Techniques, and Traditions From Around the World.
When it comes to fermentation, everything that can be done in a bakery, restaurant, winery or brewery can be done at home— even if the domestic failure rate may be a
little higher and the production considerably smaller. Newark’s How Do You Brew supplies many of Delaware’s home brewers with their basic equipment, sanitary supplies, all-in-one kits and many forms of yeasts to perform basement alchemy. How Do You Brew co-owner Jason Scott got started the same way many of his customers did. “I had some prior experience,” Scott quips. “I’d made my own hard cider, but when it exploded in the refrigerator, my wife told me, ‘Never again.’”
Still, Scott notes that cider is the easiest TheHuntMagazine.com 73
FOOD & DRINK