Why do I bother with lacto-fermentation? I don't actually have to worry about it, right? I could find yogurt, pickles, sauerkraut, hot sauce, and all manner of products that would have traditionally been produced as a result of preservation by lactic acid fermentation at any local supermarket. Am I not satisfied with that?

I'm not, and you shouldn't be, either.

With most mass-produced foods, taste and health often have to take a back-seat to the realities of logistics. I cover a few of the biggest offenders here:

What's Wrong with Pickles?

Take pickles, for instance. I've looked at a lot of supermarket pickle labels in my life, and they usually contain vinegar. There's nothing inherently wrong with vinegar, but it's a pretty good indicator that the pickles weren't preserved by lactic acid. Vinegar is produced by fermentation, yes. But the fermentation is done by Acetobacter bacteria, who produce acetic acid, as opposed to Lactobacillus bacteria, who produce lactic acid.

The Difference Between Supermarket Pickles and Traditional Pickles

Why does it matter which acid was used to produce a pickle? Personally, I just prefer the taste of lacto pickles. It has a rounder tanginess and some sweetness to it, whereas I find the vinegar pickles have a sharper sourness when they aren't downright pungent.

At this point I'd also like to point out that pickles were, traditionally, made by lactic-acid fermentation. That's just what happens naturally when you put cucumbers and brine in an anaerobic environment. But if it's that easy, then how did we end up with vinegar pickles?

The Realities of Pickle Logistics

The answer, as with a lot of mass-market mysteries, is scale. These supermarket pickles I've been talking about are ubiquitous because they're produced and distributed at massive scale. There's no single pickle factory that supplies each major brand of mass-market pickles, they're spread out upon the face of the earth. Each production facility gets slightly different pickles with slightly different bacteria on them, and the more you scale up production the more these small differences compound, and the harder it becomes to plan and manage production or maintain a consistent product.

In short, many of the large pickle brands made the decision to switch to vinegar brines to get around those problems of scale. Why wait an indeterminate amount of time for batches of product that each come out slightly differently when you can just add some vinegar brine to some cucumbers and call it a day? After all, the concentration of acid is what matters when it comes to preserving the vegetable. It takes the natural microbes days to weeks to build that concentration, but the vinegar is already at the correct acidity when it's added to the cucumbers. You can even use heat-processing on the vinegar pickles to sterilize them, so you can store them for years without refrigeration.

So pickles made with vinegar brine are a pickle distributor's dream, and it means we can have a year-round supply of extremely consistent pickles. The only problem is that they're an inferior product.

The Travesty of Supermarket Sauerkraut

Most people I meet claim they do not like sauerkraut. When asked to describe the stuff, however, they usually describe a mushy, soggy mass of vegetable matter with a biting, unpleasant sourness. These are the hallmarks of a mass-produced sauerkraut. It has ruined many a Reuben sandwich: the rye bread is not supposed to be soaked. Actually, the rye bread itself shouldn't even be close to as soft as white bread, but that's a story for another time.

What is Supermarket Sauerkraut?

A lot of these sauerkraut products are made by adding starter cultures to the shredded cabbage, which helps control the time of fermentation. They still have to be shelf-stable, though, so these products are frequently pasteurized, which destroys any probiotic value they had. Some even have vinegar added to them to help acidify the brine, a fate similar to the pickles mentioned above.

Is the "Raw" Sauerkraut Any Better?

Some people mention the raw sauerkraut that is often also available in supermarkets. While I agree it's almost always superior to the pasteurized, vinegar-laden alternatives, I do notice a lot of inconsistency between batches. Some are pretty crunchy and less sour, signs of a relatively young ferment, while others are soggy and pungent, and showing other signs of age.

The Solution

If you really want sauerkraut that's consistently to your liking, there's no easy way around making it yourself. If it's sitting in your kitchen its whole life, you can test its ripeness along the way and eat it when it becomes palatable to you.

You can also control what goes into it. The type of cabbage. The way it's cut into chunks or slices. The amount of salt. The herbs and flavorings. Even the temperature of the environment, to some extent at least.

You can tweak all of these variables until you find a sour cabbage that suits you.

Boring Sourdough

Some store-bought sourdough bread is quite good. There are a few supermarkets near me that sell a product that's baked fresh on-site, on-par with some of the best local bakeries. My only gripes with these breads is their spotty availability, their outrageous prices, and their boring-ness. Even the local bakeries have these problems.

Availability

The availability problem is forgivable. There are logistical realities these bakers have to deal with, and I can see why it's better for them to underproduce than to waste time and inputs on a quickly-perishing product.

High Price-Point

I have a much harder time looking past the premium price point. The raw ingredients are pretty cheap, so you're paying for the baker's time and the markup they need to add to make it worth their effort. In exchange, you get a quality product without the inconvenience of baking it yourself. But is it really worth paying three to four times the price on such a dietary staple? Around here, a quality, fresh-baked sourdough loaf goes for between $5 - $7 USD, depending on the size of the loaf. On the other hand, I can get the price below $1.50 per loaf by sourcing my own grain and making the bread myself. If you go through two loaves per week, that's a savings of up to $572 per year, compared to the $7 loaf.

The Boring-ness of Supermarket Sourdough

Finally, and arguably most importantly, the store-bought stuff is just kinda boring. Even the local bakeries have to pander to popular tastes and focus on mass-appeal to be able to move enough product. By making your own naturally-leavened bread you can play around with the variables, just like you can with sauerkraut. You can get a crispier or softer crust. You can get extreme with the sourness. If you buy whole wheat berries, you can even control the fineness of the flour and see how it affects the texture of the final product. You can discover the bread you like best, and the availability becomes limited only to your willingness to bake it.