I always enjoy reading cookbooks and about the history of food. Our Fermented Lives fits the bill. The interesting stories about food preservation and the included recipes are informative and useful.
Fermented foods are the latest trend in the food world. This book is right on target for today’s audience.

Excellent book for those, who want to know history of fermentation and how it works. I enjoyed it and highly recommend to all, who want to learn the role of fermentation in our lives.

A superb book. It’s practical, set in context both historically and culturally, and inspiring. The research would have been daunting for others, but she wears the knowledge lightly. The historical aspects were really interesting. I liked that it covered cultures east to west and Middle Eastern.

But best of all, she used her own knowledge of fermenting to encourage everyone to try it. And provided practical recipes and tips to make it easy.

In a world where we need to reduce food poverty, this reminds us of how nothing need be wasted, and how our ancestors used simple ingredients to preserve food and increase health.

The perfect book for me - fermenting, history, and so many recipes! It's a book I will read again.

[I received a copy of this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review]

Wow, wow, wow. Our Fermented Lives by Julia Skinner seems to be the premier source on fermenting for me. It is an in-depth look into the history, culture, and uses of fermented foods. Highly researched and just the kimchi history alone was enough of a reason for me to read it. Julia has done her homework and she is very knowledgeable about fermentation and has the passion it takes to write a book of this sophistication on the long history of fermenting food.

The book does have recipes and as we all know fermented foods have many health benefits. Libraries would benefit to add this to their collection of a subject that is all the bubbly buzz right now. It could be used as a textbook on fermented foods it's that highly researched.

I feel smarter for having read this book.

The history, philosophy, and practice of fermentation is something I only thought I knew about and loved...then I picked Our Fermented Lives up and realized I had only scratched the surface.

A must have for anyone who enjoys fermenting, sourdough, etc and for any foodie and historian.

<i>Thank you Netgalley for the arc </i>

A great overview of fermentation and how fermentation has evolved through history. It's fun to see how communities have been sustained.

I'm mostly interested in the lacto-fermentation process, because I pickle things. This book did make me more intrigued about meads, beers, coffee, teas, and bread. This book inspires you to become more self-sufficient and has me thinking about the things I'm capable of making at home this season.

I love fermented foods, and so does this book! Chock full of history, wisdom, recipes, tricks and tips, Skinner has provided a veritable tome of fermentation. I learned about foods I had never heard of, and learned a lot about foods I knew a little bit about. Very inspirational. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read an advance copy - I've got to go burp my ferments!

Part introduction, part cultural and historical guide, part collection of fermented food recipes. This book was ambitious from the start, in that it aimed to give the reader an overall view of what is a fermented food and why it is so important to human civilisation to this very day.

I asked myself whilst reading whether this will appeal to readers with no prior knowledge and I think it does a good job in describing the broad spectrum of ferments and its diverse rich history. But I have also found inspiration in new ferments as my previous knowledge of ferments is very Eurocentric or Asia-centric. Being introduced to ferments from the African diaspora and the Latinx diaspora is very exciting and I want to research more into them.

The book is still very Anglo-centric in its sources and details. The author acknowledges this and explained that this is also due to the lack of written records throughout history, many culturally important dishes are passed on through oral traditions or have no standardised recipe. Therefore a lot of ancient dishes are only speculated on and the reader has to use their imagination on what bread would have tasted like from Pompeii.

I still appreciate the attempt to highlight indigenous dishes as it’s important to have a written testament to them.

What about the recipes in the book?
There are a lot of recipes and if I were to compare them to my favourite fermentation book “Noma’s guide to fermentation”. The recipes are written to make them much more accessible to new fermenters. Less technical terminology and not as intimidating as Noma; who teaches you how to make your own professional fermentation station.

I also liked how the author encourages experimentation with flavours for the adventurous. They make suggestions on flavour pairings and when is best to include those flavours in the recipe.

My final critique will be about the writing style and by the middle of the book, I was fatigued from all the info-dumping. It’s a real shame because I do want to learn more about kiviak, a traditional dish of the Inuit people. So when the author listed facts like a Wikipedia page, I think there’s room for compelling storytelling so the reader can engage with these important dishes.

Overall, I appreciate a really comprehensive book on fermentation. For more experienced fermenters, this could be a fun book for the collection. But depending on their experience - they will find diminishing returns on this book. This book would be great as a gift for a ferment newbie, alongside a starter kit for their first ferment.

Sometimes I forget how much I love food writing, and food history, and thinking about how food works in society. Then I read a book like this and I'm reminded all over again.

I've never particularly gone down the fermentation path. I did have a sourdough starter for a year or so - before lockdown, I swear! - but I found it too wasteful, throwing out the starter (I am considering going back to it, having read this...).

This book is:
-- personal - Skinner mentions parts of her own journey, both in understanding food and more broadly, throughout.

-- aiming to be broad in outlook and postcolonial in attitude: she carefully notes having tried to speak to / read from the people who actually make the ferments, and that it is "critically important, particularly as someone with relative privilege, not to overshadow others' stories with my own words and perspectives". I think food history is one way in which the colonial agenda can, indeed, still be present, so I appreciate this acknowledgement and the attempt.

-- partly a history, looking at the role of fermentation in different cultures across time, and speculating about how such things might have been discovered. Also the range of fermentation experiments! I love any story that includes garum, that probably-incredibly-stinky fish sauce of the Romans.

-- a bit science-y, but not that much. Humans are really only beginning to understand the interplay between the gut microbiome and our general health, so it was interesting to think a bit about how fermented foods might help there.

-- partly a cookbook. Why yes, I have every intention of trying mushroom ketchup, thankyouverymuch (it came before tomato ketchup, because after all don't forget how late tomatoes are on the European culinary scene).

-- a bit philosophical, which wasn't always my cup of tea (... or kombucha...). There's discussion of the word 'culture' and how it can mean the microbes as as well as human interactions, which I didn't fully get on board with - it seemed to stretch the ideas a bit far. And claims about mindfulness and community that did, actually, make me stop and think. The idea that ferments enable us to 'live a more embodied life'; that the time taken to have a slow meal with friends 'is a necessary act we give ourselves precious little time for'.

-- not perfect. Some of the segues between sections are abrupt and don't follow what I would consider logical or natural links. And there are some instances of poor editing - mentioning that the eruption of Mt Vesuvius happened in 79CE, for instance, twice on one page. But those are relatively minor issues. (I was more thrown by the idea that Samuel Pepys was "best known for burying his beloved wine and cheese stores to protect them from the 1666 Great Fire of London" rather than, say, for the incredibly detailed decade-long diary he kept.)

Overall, a book I thoroughly enjoyed reading, and I have quite the list of recipes to try out.

Fascinating! A deep dive into the subject. Perhaps a few photos or illustrations could have been included, particularly for the recipes?

This book “ Our Fermented Lives” will provide the reader an interesting background of the fermentation of foods from the beginning of man’s existence! Early on, because of the lack of adequate ways to preserve foodstuffs, man had to develop ways to keep vegetables, grains, legumes, and fruits longer, thus fermenting cabbage to create sauerkraut, chow chow, grapes into wine, and hops into beer, to name a few. The ingenuity of the fermented process helped to feed, and keep man relatively healthy for centuries. She includes simple recipes and ideas, as an introduction to try in your own kitchen.

Fermented foods, and the micro-organisms used to create them, have been a part of human life for thousands of years, and ‘Our Fermented Lives’ gives us a look into not only the many ways they have been essential to different populations, but also how they can still be applicable to us today. The history shows that fermentation wasn’t just a western method of food preservation, but instead a tool for survival used globably. And I appreciate how the blindspots in our knowledge of fermentation’s history were recognized, especially those caused by the biases of those recording and interpreting it.

At the end of each chapter there are recipes for readers to use as a jumping off point on their own fermentation journeys, for everything from sauerkraut to ginger beer to injera. They all have suggestions for ways in which to customize recipes for the reader’s individual taste and use as minimal equipment as possible. I can attest that both the mushroom ketchup and fermented tomato ketchup recipes can garner delicious results, having tried them both in my own kitchen.

This book has something to learn for anyone, whether they have never tried to ferment before or they have been fermenting in their own kitchen for years. I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in food preservation, sustainability, or food history.

I thought this book was so interesting! It does have recipes in it, and they're certainly useable by the look of it, however, I think the strength of this book is more in the way the history of fermentation is told and the attention paid to the diversities and similarities of fermentation practices around the world. The book also takes time to tackle cultural appropriation in food, which is a topic that definitely needs its champions.

Also, the author does her best (and succeeds) at making fermentation seem like something that's approachable for people with any skill or budget. You just need a jar and something heavy and you're already halfway there. Reading this book definitely has inspired me to try out new fermentations.

I wonderfully researched book about fermentation and how people Evolved with it And love it. This book explores the common western ones, yeast, yogurt, alcohol, But also very unusual world ones. I loved discovering those, ranging from mead to soups and porridges and finding the recipes all over the book. Most of them are taken from historical sources, as old as ancient Egypt ones and come from all around the globe from Africa to Asia. It is incredibly rich, and best of all they are simple, and the author encourages us to tweak them to our liking with our favourite flavours. I have never dared try fermenting anything in my kitchen, but this book is quite empowering in it’s encouragement to experiment.
The author also talks a lot about their own experience and why this is important to them. It was a nice added touch. I highly recommend it if you are an adventurous eater, or you want to be more self-sufficient.

I grew up on fermented foods. My grandmother always had pickles or sauerkraut going and later on my mother added kimchi to her rotation. What’s not to love? Not all fermented foods are going to be love, but most are, at least for me and mine. Pickles and Sauerkraut are just the tip of the iceberg. This book will get you started, or move you forward with fermenting food at home. A fabulous addition to your home cookbook library.