Sauerkraut — What Fermentation Taught Me the Week I Finally Made My Own Bread

The week ran easy. Recovery week from the drive. The cattle are in the spring pasture and the calves are growing and the grass is up and the shop work is light because everyone is busy planting or moving cattle of their own. I did chores. I shod two horses. I helped Mom in the garden — first turning of the soil, the asparagus bed cleared and dressed with composted manure, the pea pod trellises set up — and I sat on the porch with Patrick in the afternoons and we did not say much. The week was a porch week. Some weeks are porch weeks. You do not apologize for them.

Patrick has been steady on the new medication regimen. The cognitive screen the neurologist ran in early April came back clean. The Tuesday confusion of February has not repeated. The tremor is moderate, which the doctor calls a "good baseline." Good is relative. Good is what we have. Good is enough.

Tara called Wednesday. Maggie is nine weeks. She is laughing now. Real laughs, not gas-shaped grimaces. Tara recorded one and sent it to Mom. Mom played it twenty times. Mom is a grandmother in a way that has surprised me. I thought I knew her. I did not. She is besotted in ways I did not know my mother was capable of. She talks to Maggie on the phone. She narrates the ranch into the phone. She tells Maggie about the calves and the chickens and the asparagus. Tara plays the calls back to Maggie later. Mom is going to be on tape in Maggie's ear from infancy. Maggie is going to know my mother's voice the way only the most-loved grandkids know their grandmothers' voices. Mom is doing this on purpose. I see it now. She is establishing herself in Maggie's ear before her voice can fade. She knows what Patrick's situation might mean for her own time. She is making sure Maggie has her in audio. I am not going to say so to her. She is doing it. I am noticing.

I made bread Tuesday. The first sourdough I have ever attempted to bake without Mom's direct supervision. Mom has been making sourdough for forty years from a starter her mother brought from her mother in 1940 — a starter that is, by careful arithmetic, eighty-five years old this year. Mom let me work with her starter. I made a loaf. The first one was acceptable. The crumb was tight. The crust was right. The flavor was a little flat. Mom said, You needed to ferment longer. I said, Yeah. The second loaf, Wednesday, was better. The third, Thursday, was good. By Friday I had made three loaves I was proud of. Mom said, You will get there. She said, I have been making bread for forty years. You will be making bread for forty years. I said, Mom. She said, Yes. I said, Thanks. She said, For what. I said, For the starter. She said, It is the family starter. It is yours too. I said, Okay. The starter is in a jar in the kitchen. It is older than my parents. It is going to outlast all of us. It is what feeds us.

Cooked Sunday a pot of New Mexico-style green chile pork. Three pounds of pork shoulder cubed, browned, simmered with green chiles I had roasted and frozen last September, broth, garlic, oregano, cumin. Three hours. Served with my own sourdough — the third loaf, the good one — and rice. Patrick had two bowls. He said, This bread, son. This bread. I said, I made it, Dad. He said, I know. He said, You are getting there. I said, I am. The fire helps. The bread helps. Patrick saying I am getting there helps most of all. Saturday cookout was ten men. Marcus made two hundred fourteen days. The men are starting to take Marcus's sobriety as a fact. The fact is a comfort. The fire helps.

The week that gave me my first three good sourdough loaves also gave me a sharper understanding of what fermentation actually is — not a trick or a technique, but a kind of patience you apply to living things and then trust. Mom’s starter is eighty-five years old because someone, every single week, kept feeding it. Sauerkraut works the same way: you salt the cabbage, you press it, you wait, and the thing becomes more than it started as. After a week of porch sitting, bread baking, and watching Patrick eat two bowls of green chile pork with bread I made myself, I wanted to put up a jar of something that would keep — something that would sit on the shelf and go on getting better. This is that recipe.

Sauerkraut

Prep Time: 30 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes (fermentation: 1–4 weeks) | Total Time: 1–4 weeks | Servings: 16 (about 1 quart)

Ingredients

• 2 pounds green cabbage (about 1 medium head), outer leaves removed
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt (non-iodized)
• 1 teaspoon caraway seeds (optional)

Instructions

1. Shred the cabbage. Quarter the cabbage and remove the core. Slice each quarter into thin ribbons, about 1/8-inch thick. Transfer to a large mixing bowl.
2. Salt and massage. Sprinkle the kosher salt evenly over the cabbage. Using clean hands, massage and squeeze the cabbage firmly for 8–10 minutes until it has released a significant amount of brine and feels limp and wet throughout. If using caraway seeds, add them now and mix to combine.
3. Pack the jar. Transfer the cabbage and all accumulated brine into a clean quart-sized mason jar, pressing down firmly after each addition so the cabbage is submerged beneath its own liquid. Leave at least 1 inch of headspace at the top to allow for expansion during fermentation.
4. Weigh it down. Place a small zip-lock bag filled with brine (1 teaspoon salt dissolved in 1 cup water) on top of the cabbage to keep it submerged, or use a clean cabbage leaf folded to fit the jar mouth as a weight.
5. Cover and ferment. Cover the jar loosely with a lid, a cloth secured with a rubber band, or a fermentation lid. Set at room temperature (65–75°F), away from direct sunlight. Press the cabbage down once daily for the first few days to keep it submerged.
6. Taste and monitor. Begin tasting at 1 week. At 1 week the flavor will be mild and lightly tangy. At 2 weeks it will be brighter and more pronounced. At 3–4 weeks the flavor is fully developed, sour, and complex. Ferment to your preferred taste.
7. Seal and refrigerate. Once the sauerkraut has reached the flavor you want, seal the jar with a tight lid and transfer to the refrigerator. It will keep for up to 6 months and will continue to develop slowly in the cold.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 15 | Protein: 1g | Fat: 0g | Carbs: 3g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 185mg