Southern Bread

If you love sauerkraut, why not make your own? My wife and I made a batch last night. It’s going to take a week or so to tell if it tastes any good or not, but the process isn’t hard. It’s basically just fermenting cabbage in it’s own brine. Here’s the steps:

	Step 1 – Grow some cabbage. Or buy it at the store if you’re a loser. We grew Savoy cabbage, so that’s why it looks a bit different.
	Step 2 – Assemble your materials: cabbage, a large crock or food-grade bucket, sea salt or kosher salt (non-iodized), a plate that fits snuggly inside the crock/bucket and a knife to chop the cabbage with.
	Step 3 – Chop the cabbage and place it in the crock/bucket, sprinkling salt on it in layers so that the salt is evenly distributed throughout the cabbage. Use about 1 tablespoon of salt per head of cabbage.
	Step 4 – Press your plate down onto the top of the cabbage.
	Step 5 – Place something heavy like a gallon jug of water on top of the plate to provide constant downward pressure on the cabbage.
	Step 6 – Put a towel over the whole thing to keep out bad stuff and wait a week for the fermentation to do it’s thing.

After about a week you can start scooping it out and eating it. The pressure and salt cause all of the water to be extracted out of the cabbage. This creates an acidic brine that bad bacteria can’t grow in. Lactic bacteria love it though, and will colonize and ferment your cabbage into sauerkraut. Just make sure you sterilize your utensils and crock before you begin, to minimize bad bacteria growth. And make sure your plate fits really snug inside the crock so that it will minimize air contact. With store bought cabbage, you may have to add some water to the crock to get the brine level up above the plate where it should be. Fresh cabbage from the garden or farmer’s market has more water content.