Wild Fermentation

The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods, 2nd Edition

Foreword by Sally Fallon Morell
Categories: Food & Drink
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing

 “Wild Fermentation [has] become a manifesto and how-to manual for a generation of underground food activists.”—The New Yorker

The book that started the fermentation revolution, with recipes including kimchi, miso, sauerkraut, pickles, gundruk, kombucha, kvass, sourdough, paneer, yogurt, amazaké, and so much more!

Sandor Ellix Katz, winner of a James Beard Award and New York Times bestselling author, whom Michael Pollan calls the “Johnny Appleseed of Fermentation” returns to his iconic, bestselling book with a fresh perspective, renewed enthusiasm, and expanded wisdom from his travels around the world. This self-described fermentation revivalist is perhaps best known simply as Sandorkraut, which describes his joyful and demystifying approach to making and eating fermented foods, the health benefits of which have helped launch a nutrition-based food revolution.

Since its original publication, and aided by Katz’s engaging and fervent workshop presentations, Wild Fermentation has inspired people to turn their kitchens into food labs: fermenting vegetables into sauerkraut, milk into cheese or yogurt, grains into sourdough bread, and much more. In turn, they’ve traded batches, shared recipes, and joined thousands of others on a journey of creating healthy food for themselves, their families, and their communities. Katz’s work earned him the Craig Clairborne lifetime achievement award from the Southern Foodways Alliance, and he has been called “one of the unlikely rock stars of the American food scene” by The New York Times.

This updated and revised edition, now with full color photos throughout, is sure to introduce a whole new generation to the flavors and health benefits of fermented foods. It features many brand-new recipes, including:

  • Strawberry Kvass
  • African Sorghum Beer
  • Infinite Buckwheat Bread
  • And many more!

Updates on original recipes also reflect the author’s ever-deepening knowledge of global food traditions. For Katz, his gateway to fermentation was sauerkraut. So open this book to find yours, and start a little food revolution right in your own kitchen! 

“A solid reference library will take you a long way in the fermentation game. By law (or just about), the first book in it should be the recently revised edition of Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz. It provides know-how, recipes, [and] you-can-do-it spunk.”—Wired Magazine

More praise for Sandor Ellix Katz and his books:

The Art of Fermentation is an extraordinary book, and an impressive work of passion and scholarship.”—Deborah Madison, author of Local Flavors

“The fermenting bible.” — Newsweek

“In a country almost clinically obsessed with sterilization Katz reminds us of the forgotten benefits of living in harmony with our microbial relatives.” — Grist

Reviews and Praise

  •  "[Katz is] the country's foremost fermentation expert . . . [and] Wild Fermentation is the best and most accessible guide out there to this most ancient style of preservation."—Epicurious


More Reviews and Praise


  • "In the new and revised edition, there's a clear effort to make the recipes more straightforward and easy to understand. Soon, like me, you'll have a batch of sauerkraut fermenting away in a cool space, all year long."—Wired Magazine

  • "For amateur picklers and kimchi-makers, there is a new edition of Wild Fermentation, the manual that helped its author, Sandor Katz, become a heroic figure among cooks who ferment their own foods."—The New York Times

  • "This updated and revised edition is a more accurate reflection of the recipes Sandor makes at home—and the knowledge he's accrued by teaching workshops to eager students."—Food52

  • "Folks flock to study books such as Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation, both by the fermentation movement’s guru, Sandor Katz."—USA Today

  • "[When] I open my copy of Wild Fermentation I find that Sandor Ellix Katz, the fermentation guru and master who has inspired so many to explore the world of wild foods, always has a way to reflect on culture and society through his writing. While he writes amount fermented foods, the meaning is always deeper."—Paste Magazine

  • "A groundbreaking book."—Sierra Magazine



About The Author


About Sandor Ellix Katz

Sandor Ellix Katz is a fermentation revivalist. A self-taught experimentalist who lives in rural Tennessee, his explorations in fermentation developed out of his overlapping interests in cooking, nutrition, and gardening. He is the author of four previous books: Wild Fermentation, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, The Art of Fermentation—which won a James Beard Foundation Award in 2013—and Fermentation as Metaphor. The hundreds of fermentation workshops he has taught around the world have helped catalyze a broad revival of the fermentation arts. The New York Times calls Sandor “one of the unlikely rock stars of the American food scene.” For more information, check out his website: www.wildfermentation.com.

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Books By Sandor Ellix Katz

Pages:320 pages
Book Art:Full-color photographs and illustrations throughout
Size: 7 x 10 inch
Publisher:Chelsea Green Publishing
US Pub. Date: August 19, 2016
UK Pub. Date: September 5, 2016
Paperback: 9781603586283

Available In/Retail Price

Paperback, 320 pages, $29.95USD, £22.50GBP