Sandor Ellix Katz
The fermentation revival’s reference text, and the several hundred workshops that spread it.
The record
- Standing
- active practice
- Based
- Rural Tennessee
- Recognition
- James Beard Foundation Award, 2013, for The Art of Fermentation.
- Also
- The Art of Fermentation was selected by The New York Times as one of the twenty-five most influential cookbooks of the last hundred years.
- Method
- Self-taught experimentalist; the workshops he has taught worldwide are credited with catalysing a broad revival of the fermentation arts.
Standing is this studio’s placement of the work, not a ranking of the person, and it is the one line here that is a judgement rather than a cited fact.
The work
Katz’s contribution is a stance as much as a technique: that fermentation is a folk practice belonging to everyone, that it predates and does not require laboratory control, and that the reason to learn it is cultural as well as nutritional.
Wild Fermentation made the case; The Art of Fermentation is the comprehensive reference, covering vegetables, grains, dairy, meat, beans and beverages across traditions, with the microbiology explained but never used as a gate. It won a James Beard Award in 2013 and has been widely translated.
For a farm, the relevance is direct. The same vessels, the same salt ratios, the same understanding of what an anaerobic environment does and when a ferment has gone wrong apply whether the substrate is cabbage for the table or fish scraps for the field. He is on this page because the craft does not actually divide.
Where to read them
Sources for this record
Corrections
This record was assembled from the sources above, and nothing in it was inferred to fill a gap. If it is about you and it is wrong, or you would rather not be listed, write and it changes.