For curious home cooks
Want to understand food and try something in the kitchen? Start with a recipe, its quantities, instructions and source.
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Natalia Horbach, PhD
Fermentation knowledge hub.
A good question deserves a clear answer. Explore science close to the kitchen, observation guides and resources worth coming back to.
Find your topicNatalia Horbach, PhDA PLACE TO START
01 / Sourdough & koji
What brings sourdough to life?
Flour, water and microbial teamwork. Understand the process before measuring your ingredients.
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Read. Calculate. Record.
FERMENTARNIA / Articles
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Resources: 10 / 10
Article / Vegetables
Fermented vegetables. What actually happens in the jar?
A cucumber, salt, water and time. A simple beginning to a story whose most important characters are invisible to the naked eye.
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Article / Drinks
Kombucha. A small world in a cup of tea.
It begins with sweetened tea. Then a community of microorganisms gets to work, changing its flavour and composition.
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Article / Drinks
Wine fermentation. Science behind every bubble.
You can see movement in the demijohn, but the most important changes happen at the scale of a cell. Winemaking is a fascinating lesson in biochemistry.
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Article / Dairy
Cheese: fermentation, curd and ripening
From delicate fresh curd to strongly aromatic cheese, the diversity of cheese starts with milk and develops through several processes. Fermentation, curd formation and ripening are connected, although each term describes a different part of the transformation.
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Article / Vegetables
Beyond sauerkraut: kimchi and the colours of fermentation
Vegetable fermentation takes many forms. Korean kimchi shows how vegetables and seasonings create an environment for whole communities of microorganisms. Red cabbage, carrots and beetroot invite a closer look at colour, too. These foods deserve to be explored without reducing them all to a single recipe.
Read the resourceArticle / Sourdough & koji
Sourdough starter: the living world of flour and water
A sourdough starter is a fermenting mixture of flour and water inhabited by lactic acid bacteria and yeasts. With successive refreshments, its microbial community changes, while the dough develops acidity and the ability to rise.
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Article / Sourdough & koji
Koji: a fungus that sets transformations in motion
Rice koji is made by growing a selected culture of the fungus Aspergillus oryzae on prepared rice under controlled conditions. The fungus produces enzymes that change the raw material’s composition. This is an important stage in several Japanese food processes.
Read the resourceGuide / Measurements
pH in fermentation: what does the number say?
Sour taste, a meter reading and acid content are related. They are not three names for the same thing.
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How do you calculate salt for fermentation?
“Two percent” sounds precise. Until we ask: two percent of what?
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How to keep a fermentation journal
Memory likes shortcuts. A journal preserves details that can later become essential.
Read the resourceEveryone arrives with a different question.
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Meet NataliaNatalia Horbach, PhD
I combine food technology, chemical sciences and teaching. At Fermentarnia I explain processes and distinguish observations from conclusions.