On the Wearing of Masks

As a fermentation enthusiast, I feel that I have a duty to add my voice to the chorus of so many others begging and pleading with our friends, neighbors, and relatives to wear a mask when out in public during a pandemic. No, I’m no scientist or epidemiologist, but I think considering things from the perspective of how and why fermentation works makes for a…

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Back to an All-Purpose Starter

I wrote back in May that I was transitioning my sourdough starter to whole wheat flour. Now I’m transitioning back to all-purpose! There’s nothing wrong with a whole wheat starter, and if you use one and like it, great! After a month of trying it, there are 4 observations I’ve made about the difference that have convinced me to reverse course. #1–Texture Whole wheat starter…

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Black Lives Matter

I created this website to share my successes and failings in home fermentation with anyone who visits the site. Excluding anyone based on skin color, or any other attribute, goes against everything that this site—and the global community of enthusiasts sharing with each other—stands for. We also need to recognize that this new wave of fermentation enthusiasm is propped up by privilege that is easy…

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Mushroom Amino Sauce with Shared Cultures

My friend and fellow fermentation enthusiast Eleana Hsu just uploaded the first video to the Shared Cultures YouTube channel! I’ve embedded the video at the bottom of this post. It’s a recorded live presentation in which she shows how easy it is to prepare dried mushrooms (that she foraged herself, no less) to create an amino sauce with koji, and provides a lot of tips…

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Sourdough Science

I am transitioning my sourdough starter to whole wheat from the all-purpose flour I’ve been using. Partly because I finally found some whole wheat flour at the store this week, and partly because of this stunning time lapse video showing the rise and fall of three kinds of starter, made by the Wild Sourdough Project at the Rob Dunn Lab: While the white and wheat…

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What’s Next?

Wow, a week has gone by already since the site launched, and there is still so much I want to do! Making time to continue pushing site updates has been difficult with a busy work schedule, and on top of that, it’s planting season! I’m actually a bit late with planting this year, due to a large oak tree falling on my garden (and garage)…

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Happy Birthday!

Hello world! Welcome to Crock of Time, my little corner of the internet, a place for me to try to give back to a world that is in some chaos at the moment. This website is launching on May 19, 2020 (my birthday!), during the global COVID-19 pandemic (or after it, or maybe before it really got bad, depending on who you are and/or when…

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