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with the invisible world, trying to cultivate an advantageous ecology; but I don't control it. Even when
a batch of starter gets too weak or too sour and I flush it down the toilet, irrepressible
Saccharomyces
cerevisiae
has already begun to recolonize my kitchen. It is an agent in my life.
In a similar way, fermentation breeds acceptance of compromise and contradiction. Fermentation
rebels against an ultra-pasteurized food system and our culture's obsession with anti-bacterial, hand-san-
itizing, border-guarding purity.
9
As a growing body of research on probiotic foods suggests, cultivating
a diverse and beneficial bodily ecology may protect our health as much as building ever-tougher barriers
against all microbial life. Fermentation teaches us to live with impurity, not against it. But it also teaches
the importance of hygiene and cleanliness. Nothing tastes worse than an off-fermented item, and fer-
mentation frequently reminds me that sometimes I
do
need bleach, not to mention clean water, antibiot-
ics, and protection from food-borne pathogens—the fruits of humanity's combat approach to microbes.
In other words, fermentation requires openness to ambiguity, acceptance of impurity, and the courage
to redefine preconceived boundaries between “good” and “bad.” This is a dream of good food, and thus
loaded with unintended assumptions and complicities that I can't yet see. But unlike the other dreams
of good bread presented here, fermentation is not a utopian end state like purity or naturalness. It is a
utopian process of intelligent action followed by constant self-questioning, reassessment, revision, and
more action. Always negotiated, relational, and changing, fermentation contains an appealing built-in
safeguard against hubris.
To be clear, I am not suggesting, like some counterculture guru, that just by making fermented foods
we undermine social domination and nurture a more inclusive world. Rather, since it's so apparent that
people and social movements think politically through metaphors of good food, I'm offering my own:
how would adopting the mindset of fermentation change the way we view the social world, the way we
think about food politics?
At the very least it would undermine unhelpful dreams of purity and naturalness. Perhaps it would
change the way we relate with one another across seemingly dangerous borders. Certainly it would ask
us to abandon the false clarity of moral high grounds and find footing on the harsher slopes of open
dialogue. To return to a metaphor used at the beginning of the topic, an orientation toward fermentation
tells food reformers to begin not by generously inviting others to sit at a table they have already laid
according to their vision of “good food,” but by courageously inviting others to join a discussion of how
the table should be set in the first place.
All this discussion of critical self-questioning and acceptance of ambiguity might sound terribly risky
and impractical. Indeed, it may well be more effective to stick with familiar dreams of purity, natural-
ness, scientific control, perfect health, and national security. In the end, I'm inclined to feel generous to-
ward any effort to change the food system using whatever dream, as long as it strains against injustices in
the status quo more than it reinforces them. Nevertheless, I fear that the combat-minded dreams outlined
in this history mostly lead back to the mistakes of the past. Perhaps trying a new dream—fermentation
or something else—would help, although it too would have to be examined carefully. The important
thing is that food movements keep in mind the recurring paradox of efforts to produce “good bread.”
Whether in their early twentieth-century high-modern aspirations or their late twentieth-century anti-
modern guises, they both reflect incisive social critique—desires for purer foods and promises of social
improvement—and reinforce social hierarchies by (to hearken back to Diana Vreeland) separating those
who dream from those who don't. In a time when open disdain for “unhealthy” eaters and discrimina-
tion on the basis of dietary habits grow increasingly acceptable, we might do well to spend more time
thinking about how we relate to others through food and less about what exactly to eat.