How a passion for baking fermented a fresh career move

About this episode

Chantle Edillor discusses how her passion for baking during the Covid-19 lockdown inspired her career in fermented food science.

Baking bread during Covid-19 lockdowns provided Chantle Edillor with some career inspiration. “I knew I wanted to do something different and an exploration in sourdough presented an opportunity that I felt uniquely able to pursue,” she says.  In 2022, after completing PhD research into metabolic diseases at the University of California Los Angeles, Edillor began a postdoc there, where she researched the anti-inflammatory properties of fermented foods.  She now works as a fermented food scientist at Microcosm Foods, a non-profit research organization that maps connections between fermented foods, microbes and human health, a role she combines with assay development at the Astera Institute, a similar non-profit based in the Bay Area, San Francisco.   In the third episode of a six-part podcast series about creativity in science, Edillor says fermentation techniques re-ignited a childhood interest in cooking: “I have early memories of sitting and…

People in this episode

Guest: Chantle Edillor

Topics covered

• baking
• fermentation
• career change
• science
• creativity
• food

Keywords

• baking
• fermented foods
• sourdough
• metabolic diseases
• food science
• creativity

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of California Los Angeles, Microcosm Foods, Astera Institute

Products: kombucha, red wine vinegar, miso, blue tortilla chips

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