Sandor Katz

This morning I interviewed Agnieszka Pokrywka for a special crossover edition of our new podcast Common Practice, in which we talked about fermentation as a possible act of cultural importance. We talked about this in the context of Ferment Radio, Aga’s podcast about the social and cultural implications of the practice of fermentation.

As part of my preparation for this I had reread some of the articles I have gathered about Sandor Katz, the author of Wild Fermentation and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved among other books.

According to Wikipedia, while describing himself as “a self-described ‘fermentation fetishist’, Katz has taught hundreds of food workshops around the United States, and his book Wild Fermentation (2003) has been called a classic, ‘the bible for people embarking on DIY projects like sourdough or sauerkraut’, and ‘especially notorious for getting people excited about fermenting food’. He was named one of Chow magazine’s top ‘provocateurs, trendsetters, and rabble-rousers’ in 2009“.

He has a website called Wild Fermentation where you can find out a lot of interesting things. You can also find an informative interview with him here.

And you can listen to him in an interview with the BBC, as well.

From my listening to Ferment Radio so far, I feel that I can say that Sandor Katz stands behind a lot of the discussions I have heard: sometimes explicitly but everywhere implicitly.