Artisanal food

Artisanal food encompasses breads, cheeses, fruit preserves, cured meats, beverages, oils, and vinegars that are made by hand using traditional methods by skilled craftworkers, known as food artisans. The foodstuff material from farmers and backyard growers can include fruit, grains and flours, milks for cheese, cured meats, fish, beverages, oils, and vinegars. The movement is focused on providing farm to fork type foods with locally sourced products that benefit the consumer, small scale growers and producers, and the local economy.

Prior to industrialization, most of the food items consumed were made by hand and locally produced by artisans. Artisans are skilled craftspeople. They create products that required extensive training and specialization to produce their crafts. In Medieval times, artisans formed guilds. A guild is an association of artisans or merchants that established and set standards for the control of the crafts they produced. Later when industrialization resulted in food production at factories by mechanized processes, machines and factories replaced skilled craftspeople and artisans. What followed was the mechanization of food processing. Advances in transportation and the development of highway systems meant that food production moved further away from population centers.

To become an artisan, a person must have traditionally served for a period of time as an apprentice and then a journeyman. To be admitted to a guild, a journeyman must demonstrate proficiency in their craft often by producing an acceptable piece or product that represents true mastery of that craft. Food artisans produce foods and edible foodstuffs that are not mass produced, but rather made by hand. These include cheeses, breads and baked goods, charcuterie and other foods that involve preservation or fermentation, home preservation or canning processes, and fruit preserves, cured meats, beverages, oils, and vinegars. Fermentation or otherwise controlling the preservation environment for beneficial microorganisms can be utilized for vinegars, cheeses, cured meats, wine, oolong tea, kimchi and other examples. An artisan food item is usually developed and produced over a long period of time and consumed relatively close to where the food is created.

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