A fantastic book. It is so good, that as soon as I finish reading it, I took one of his online seminars.
And also bought his other books.
Really inspiring.
For me it was life changing.

Wildcrafted Fermentation: Exploring, Transforming, and Preserving the Wild Flavors of Your Local Terroir. By Pascal Baudar. 2020. Chelsea Green Publishing (ARC eBook).

A colorful and informative foray into fermentation. I was looking forward to learning recipes beyond kombucha and traditional sauerkraut and boy does this book deliver.

Pascal Baudar's wildcrafted fermentation is a resourceful book on fermentation recipes with gorgeous pictures to boot. True to the book's title, the ingredients included in the book are mostly found in the wild. This is especially helpful if you are experienced in foraging. Still I found the book quite inspirational for a fermentation rookie and bookmarked several recipes to try at home - with readily available ingredients replacing the wild foraged ones the recipes call for.

Wildcrafted Fermentation is a tutorial guide with encyclopedic coverage of the technical process of lactofermentation of edibles with an emphasis on foraged foods. Due out 12th March 2020 from Chelsea Green Publishing, it's 304 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.

Author Pascal Baudar has written several solid books on wildcrafting along with fermentation previously and this one is a good addition to the library for both wildcrafters/self-sufficiency fans as well as explorers of diets based on natural foods and probiotics. The author's writing style is authentic, authoritative, science based, and accessible.

The introduction covers a little bit of history and cultural backgrounds for fermentation of foodstuffs as well as a capsule history of the author's personal fermentation journey, and segues nicely into the following technique and recipe chapters. The rest of the book follows a logical format, starting with basic techniques and a little biochemistry (layman accessible, not too technical), exploring and figuring out local terroir (unique characteristics of climate and ecology which impart a unique 'flavor stamp' on foods and produce from that area). There are chapters covering local ingredients, sourcing and utilizing them, as well as specific recipe tutorials for soups, pastes, spreads, sauces, cheeses and more.

The recipes themselves are clear, concise, and easy to follow. The ingredients are (mostly) easily sourced in any relatively well stocked grocery store. Most of the more difficult to find items have specific easy-to-find substitutes mentioned in the recipes. The ingredients are listed bullet style in a sidebar with both American standard measures and metric in parentheses - yay!). The photography throughout the book is clear, plentiful, and well done. Most all of the recipes and some of the process instructions are accompanied by photos.

The book also contains a cross referenced index and resource links list for further reading.

A competently written and useful niche book which would make a good selection for wildcrafters, homesteaders, natural foods enthusiasts, preppers, adventurous cooks and foodies.

Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes

A comprehensive and approachable volume on creating your own vegetable fermentations with wild ingredients. Includes step-by-step instructions with helpful photos to get you started, and lots of tips for adjusting your recipes and ingredients for your region.

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* This is a bit advanced for the most part since ive never tried fermentation before but wow this has some wild (lol) recipes! really want to buy a copy and try some of these recipes on a long trip up north! also love the photos!

The personality of this book is both approachable and sophisticated. From the language to the layout, the narrative and the instructions are accessible, but there seems to be something for a wide variety of readers. I have a number of library patrons who will be lined up to try this entry into fermentation and foraging.

"Wildcrafted Fermentation" is a book on how to ferment plants that you have foraged locally. He doesn't include a plant ID guide, but he tells you how to look up this information online for your local area. The plants that he mentions in his recipes are ones that should be available throughout the United States and parts of Europe. However, he's mostly teaching what he's learned about fermenting different types of plants so that you can use that knowledge on what you find locally.

The author started off by explaining the basics of fermentation and talked about several different methods of fermentation, including your basic cabbage ferment and brine ferment. He also talked about how to make fermented sauces, soups, spreads, pastes, drinks, and plant-based cheeses. He described what he's learned about fermenting roots, leaves, leafy vegetables, stems, bark, berries, and fruit.

Some of the recipes had pictures showing step-by-step what to do so that you can understand the basic method. He included basic instructions for a type of fermentation (like fermenting mushrooms) and then included several recipes using those ingredients and different seasonings. These are recipes that he has developed that he enjoys. Since his focus was on taste rather than health benefits, sometimes he did a shorter ferment because he prefers the taste at that point. As someone who has done basic fermenting before, his instructions seem very doable and understandable. Overall, I think this would be a good book even for beginners to fermenting, but especially for people who want to expand the range of what they ferment.

This book is beautifully appointed. It's approachable and well organized. I love the detailed explanations and I'm a sucker for a well researched author. Trying out a single recipe 12 different ways to land on a favorite will always curry favor with me. If you've ever wanted to learn about fermentation and how to do it soup to nuts, this book is true gem.

I love the nature and fermenting foods like pickles and cabbage. This was a very good learning experience.

This book is perfect for its audience the only problem is I think its audience is a bit smaller than it needs to be. Regular foragers will find plentiful information and resources from an author who seems to both know his stuff and care deeply about it. On the other hand, someone who is only interested in weird native vegetables or fermentation might not find the recipes too exciting and would be better off sticking to a normal fermentation book.

There seems to be a huge resurgence in fermentation and I’m glad for it! A local restaurant here in Oklahoma City caught my attention with their use of their own wildcrafted fermented goodies and I wanted to learn more, which is how I found this book.

Most of us are familiar with sauerkraut, but there are so many other options and the author presents these to you. I’m going to be a wild rafter fermentation machine in 2020! The plant based cheese chapter really intrigued me. While I am not a vegan and I love milk cheeses, I have friends who won’t touch milk cheeses.

This is going to be fun to try out some new recipes and see where they take me!

This was an interesting book about fermentation and using what can be found in nature. I think this one could probably work best in the US, as some of the things mentioned in this book can't be found in Norway. I like the concept though.

The fermentation process has been used for food preservation for many generations. This generation has "discovered" this process in a quest to improve our diets and therefore our lives. After 50 years of preserving my garden using many differing types of fermentation, I was unsure if I'd find anything new in this book, but I did. Pascal Baudar has obviously spent considerable time and effort to be as inclusive as possible. This book would be a great resource for any home gardener or naturalist looking to preserve and improve their overall diets.

A brilliant read. Clear, interesting and friendly advice on fermentation in general, and specifically on interesting ways to incorporate wild ingredients.
As a keen gardener and lover of the outdoors, with a garden and an allotment, now I have grand plans for the dandelion, chickweed and oxalis that cover my ground for free! I love the idea of forest floor paste and will be trying out the recipes throughout the seasons ahead. First though, I need to try these cheeses - fermented plant=based cheese may not sound appealing to the uninitiated but, having tried some at a workshop last year, I know they are addictively wonderful.
Recommended for both the beginner fermenter and the experienced person who wants to try new flavours and ingredients. Bring the outdoors to your plate!

I am a huge fan of Pascal Baudar and have been enthusiastically awaiting this book for over a year. I am in some Facebook groups with Pascal and follow him on social media, so I've seen some of the photos and read updates about the wild non-dairy cheeses he was making and other projects he was undertaking for this book. I was so excited to get to preview a digital ARC and read it.

I still love Pascal but I didn't get as much from the book as I expected, despite it being a nearly 300 page book. I can't use most of the recipes for several reasons. Firstly, he forages in California and the wild plants available to him are very different from those I generally forage in Minnesota. With the exception of a few wild plants that you can find just about anywhere like acorns and garlic mustard, there are so many recipes that just call for vastly different ingredients than those that I can forage. Secondly, his recipes tend to be more ideas than specific recipes. He is good at telling you the general way he made something and then you are supposed to experiment and do something similar on your own. Thirdly, we just have quite different tastes in food. As beautiful as a non-dairy cheese is when it's wrapped in "forest floor" dried leaves and sticks, I don't really want to make the crust of my cheeses out of dried plant material that tastes like a forest floor. Likewise, his taste in fermented foods is just quite a bit more funky, shall we say. He likes potent, bitter, spicy, strong flavors. I am more of a fermented elderberry honey or lactofermented wild asparagus kind of person and he is a spicy garlic mustard kimchi kind of person. Lastly, there weren't actually that many recipes in the book and most of the wild foods that I would love to ferment were never mentioned at all.

I still love the book and love Baudar. I don't know that I'll buy this one (I own and love his wild brewing book), but it's one that I'm so glad that I read and that I definitely learned from and loved reading. Baudar remains my favorite living foraging author (Euell Gibbons is my favorite ever), and I will continue to marvel at his creativity and applaud his foraging spirit.

All of Baudar's books are pretty much must-reads for anyone who loves foraging. There's nobody like him and his passion and knowledge are fantastic. Just keep in mind that you need a pretty good skill set to implement a lot of his recipes. Also note that this book does not contain ID information.

Highly recommended for those who love foraging or fermenting or those who really want to learn more about wild fermentation.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.

This is a book by an enthusiast of the first order and should be read as such. Fundamentally it's about fermenting a wide variety of plant foods safely and, for the practicalities of this, it's great. The author does like his wild plants, let's face it - he's a devoted eccentric - but equally happy to give options for supermarket purchases for the less adventurous or those away from "terroirs". I like the use of Latin names (with the English as well) making sure we know what plants he's talking about, but then, I'm a botanist by training. He deals with safety and ethics - what and where you might forage - in a practical way too. The basics are well illustrated as are many of his jars of ferments. I like the stories attached to the chapters which make this a book to read as well as use in the kitchen. He's happy to say what didn't quite work - too many nettles or dandelions - and talks about the various pitfalls on the way to the plate. The mushroom achar recipe works well although, naturally, I didn't "quite" follow his recipe - I used some oriental greens I had in the tunnel, omitted the curry powder and used some water kefir culture as the starter - but he encourages experimentation and variation! Pity I didn't get this book earlier as the wild radish pods in barbecue spice blend sounds really good; sadly the not wild radish pods went on the compost heap a few weeks ago! I'm early on in my fermentation journey but this book will certainly help me move along that road via a mixture of common sense and enthusiasm. Thanks to NetGalley and Chelsea Green Publishing for an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.