EP 120: Fermenting Wisdom with Sarah Owens

In this episode I talk with baker and horticulturist, Sarah Owens, during her book tour launch of her third book: Heirloom.A James Beard Award winner, Sarah specializes in sourdough cultures and other types of fermentation, as well as locally-grown and heirloom ingredients. 

We talk about why food preparation is so sacred and the beauty of making food with your hands. Hint: it transmits your own special essence to people who eat your food - through the microbiome (bacterial cultures) on your hands. We learn how working with unpredictable fermentation processes in food preparation can foster your own intuition -- helping you listen to and trust yourself more deeply. 

Sarah is a proponent of using fresh-milled flours and sourdough starters that she’s personally developed, and she walks her talk: she’s made over 50,000 loaves of bread in the last 10 years and over 30,000 fermented grain cookies in the last two years! 

Sarah talks about baking bread as one of her paths to self-awareness and self-care. We chat about the potential to gain personal insights during the alchemical process of baking bread, as well as the nature of fermentation, that it fosters cultures (both bacterial and people across the globe) and the spread of unique foods from around the world. 

She describes how she travels the world to places like Mexico, Moscow, Georgia, Italy and Lebanon, teaching and learning about the fine art of fermentation in baking and cooking.