Catalog

fermentation

• Affinage — The managed aging of cheese, in which moisture, enzymes, and surface or interior microbes finish texture and flavor under air, humidity, and time.
• Beer — A malt beverage: alcoholic fermentation of malted barley with hops in brewing water — not grape wine, not honey wine, not a soda.
• Biga — A family of stiff yeast preferments, drier than a poolish, mixed ahead and later incorporated into dough.
• Bloomy rind — A surface-ripened style whose white mold coat proteolyzes the paste from the outside in — U.S. identity is “soft ripened cheese,” not a named Brie law.
• Blue cheese — Cheese ripened with interior mold, usually encouraged by piercing so air reaches the paste — a make choice, not “wild cave air” as an explanation.
• Brix — Dissolved solids in juice or wine expressed as grams of sucrose per 100 grams of solution at 68 °F — a density number, not a tasting of sweetness and not a harvest commandment.
• Bulk fermentation — The first rise of mixed dough, when yeast and bacteria produce gas, acid, and flavor before the loaf is shaped.
• Cabbage — A headed brassica whose shredded leaves, with salt, become sauerkraut — an acid fermented vegetable, not a vinegar pickle.
• Carbonation — Carbon dioxide held in a drink until pressure changes release it as bubbles — a physical state that can come from fermentation or added gas.
• Carbonic maceration — Intact grape berries shifting to anaerobic, intracellular fermentation under carbon dioxide before yeast in the free juice finish the wine — not a punch-down of crushed must.
• Chaptalization — Adding sugar or same-fruit concentrate to low-sugar juice before or during fermentation so yeast can make more alcohol — U.S. wine law caps the juice at 25 degrees Brix.
• Cheese — Milk concentrated and transformed by acidification, coagulation, whey removal, salt, and time into a food whose texture and flavor keep changing.
• Cheese cultures — Selected lactic bacteria, and sometimes molds or adjuncts, added to milk to acidify it and to set the flavor path of a cheese.
• Cider — Apple (or pear) juice fermented to an alcoholic drink — U.S. fruit-wine identity may call it cider, and must if it lacks a vinous character.
• Cultured butter — Butter churned from cream that lactic bacteria have already soured, so the fat carries a yogurt-like tang the churn did not invent.
• Desired dough temperature — The target temperature of dough at the end of mixing, used so fermentation and the bakery schedule stay inside a planned window.
• Dill pickles (NCHFP fermented) — USDA/NCHFP fermented dill pickles per gallon of crock — 4 lb cucumbers, salt, 5 percent vinegar, and water — optional boiling-water canning from that page only.
• Drinks — Fermented drinks that are not grape wine — mead from honey, cider from apples, beer from malt and hops — sharing yeast metabolism, not a cellar.
• Fermentation — Microbial transformation of food, producing gas, acid, alcohol, and flavor in bread, cheese, wine, and beyond.
• Fermentation scheduling — Using dough temperature, inoculation, and cold holds so bulk and proof land when the baker — not the clock — is ready.
• Fermented hot sauce — Chili mash soured by lactic fermentation, distinct from vinegar-acidified bottled hot sauce, with refrigeration and tested canning processes serving different preservation goals.
• Fermented pickles — Cucumbers or other vegetables soured by lactic fermentation in brine — distinct from fresh-pack pickles, which are acidified with vinegar and are not fermented.
• Final proof — The last rise of a shaped loaf, when the dough relaxes and gains the gas it will carry into the oven.
• Follow fermentation across crafts — One biology — microbes transforming sugar — applied in bread, cheese, wine, and sour vegetables without copying each craft's textbook.
• Inoculation — How much leaven — commercial yeast, levain, or starter — is added relative to flour, setting how fast the dough ferments.
• Kimchi — Salted napa cabbage and seasonings fermented by lactic acid bacteria — typically with gochugaru — not sauerkraut with chili, and not a canned pickle.
• Koji — Cooked grain or soy grown with Aspergillus oryzae in a solid-state culture so the mold’s enzymes can later saccharify starch and break down protein — an inoculum, not a lacto-ferment and not a home incubation recipe.
• Kombucha — Sweetened tea fermented by a mixed culture of yeast and acetic acid bacteria — a drink whose alcohol can cross the 0.5 percent U.S. line during or after bottling, not a SCOBY lifestyle page.
• Lactic acid bacteria — Bacteria that produce lactic acid (and often acetic acid) in sourdough, cheese, and other fermented foods.
• Lacto-fermentation — Preservation and souring by lactic acid bacteria that convert vegetable sugars into lactic acid, as in sauerkraut and fermented pickles — not the same process as a vinegar quick-pickle.
• Learn fermented drinks — From shared fermentation to honey wine, cider, and beer — without treating grape wine as the only alcoholic ferment.
• Lees — The sediment of dead yeast and grape solids after fermentation — a texture and flavor contact, or a sludge you rack away, depending on the wine.
• Levain — A preferment built from starter, flour, and water for a particular dough, mixed and fermented on a schedule.
• Malolactic fermentation — A bacterial conversion of sharper malic acid into milder lactic acid after (or alongside) alcoholic fermentation — a texture and aroma decision, not a second yeast ferment.
• Mead — Honey fermented to an alcoholic drink — U.S. wine identity calls it honey wine; the kitchen name is mead.
• Miso — Salted soybean paste fermented after a koji stage, aged until enzymes and microbes have broken down protein and starch — not a lacto-pickle and not a pH-4.6 canning process.
• Must — Crushed grape destined for wine — juice plus whatever skins, seeds, and pulp the winemaker keeps in contact — before alcoholic fermentation finishes.
• Napa cabbage — An elongated heading brassica — also called Chinese or winter cabbage — whose leaves are the usual vegetable for baechu kimchi, not for USDA sauerkraut.
• Pâte fermentée — Prefermented dough held from a previous mix — old dough that already contains salt — and later added to a new batch.
• Pickling — Making vegetables or fruit keepable with vinegar, salt, sugar, and spice — either by lactic fermentation or by covering food with a tested acid brine.
• Poolish — A liquid yeast preferment of equal weights flour and water, mixed ahead and later folded into the dough.
• Preferment — A portion of flour, water, and leaven fermented ahead of the dough, then mixed in so part of the bread's flour is already mature.
• Prefermented flour — The share of a formula's flour that ferments in a preferment before the final mix, visible only after baker's percent is recast.
• Retarding — Slowing fermentation by chilling dough, either in bulk or as a shaped loaf, so the clock and the flavor window move together.
• San Francisco sourdough — A civic bread story, a commercial bakery style, and a laboratory isolation — three layers that are easy to mash into one myth.
• Sauerkraut — Cabbage fermented in its own salted juice by lactic acid bacteria until it is sour, still crisp, and acid enough to treat as an acid food.
• Sauerkraut (NCHFP) — USDA/NCHFP fermented cabbage: 25 pounds cabbage and 3/4 cup canning or pickling salt, about 9 quarts — optional boiling-water canning from that page only.
• Sourdough — Bread leavened by a culture of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria rather than commercial baker’s yeast.
• Sourdough starter — A maintained culture of flour and water that hosts wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria for leavening bread.
• Sourdough troubleshooting — A map from common loaf faults — dense crumb, weak rise, harsh sourness — back to starter, fermentation, strength, and heat.
• Soybean — The oilseed Glycine max — protein and oil in one seed, and the starting food for soy flour, miso, tempeh, and koji work, not a recipe.
• Sparkling wine — Grape wine made fizzy by carbon dioxide from a closed fermentation — tank or bottle — as distinct from wine that was injected with gas.
• Tempeh — A compact white cake of dehulled boiled soybeans bound by Rhizopus mycelium — a solid-state mold ferment, not koji, not miso, and not a home incubation recipe.
• Washed rind — A surface-ripened style whose repeated brine (or similar) washes select a bacterial smear — orange to pink, savory, sometimes aggressive — rather than a white mold bloom.
• Wild yeast — Yeasts captured from flour, air, and fruit that leaven sourdough and other spontaneously fermented foods.
• Wine — A fermented drink from grapes, whose structure is alcohol, acid, tannin, and aroma shaped by vineyard, yeast, and time.
• Wine fermentation — Yeast converting grape sugar in must into ethanol and carbon dioxide — the alcoholic ferment that makes wine, distinct from malolactic bacteria and from sourdough.
• Yeast — Packaged baker’s yeast dosed into dough as a formula ingredient, distinct from the wild yeasts a sourdough starter captures.
• Yeast bread — Bread leavened primarily with commercial baker's yeast, as distinct from a sourdough culture, including doughs that still use a yeast preferment.
• Yogurt — Milk acidified by thermophilic lactic cultures into a soft gel you usually eat without cutting it for whey the way cheese is cut.