he following recipe comes with a twist. Take a 1⁄2 cup of whole wheat flour and add 1⁄2 teaspoon of malt extract, 1⁄4 teaspoon of cream of tartar, 1 tablespoon of xanthan gum and a dash of citric acid (lemon juice might do), then dissolve the mixture in 2 cups of water. Line a square baking tray with the resulting paste, sprinkle with mushroom spores (preferably reishi) and leave in the dark for 2 to 3 weeks.
After that time, according to by Assia Crawford and her colleagues, you may have grown enough fungal leather to fashion yourself a one-of-a-kind coin purse. “At this point what we’re producing is not in the realm of day-to-day leather shoes, from a durability standpoint,” says Crawford. She is still tinkering in the lab with small-scale batches.
But in theory, she says, a future is possible where most leather products are replaced by mushroom-derived alternatives. Crawford is not the first to experiment with leathers made of mushrooms. Brands including Lululemon, Stella McCartney, and Hermès already use fungal fabrics in some high-end products, but most of these fabrics are expensive because making them is slow and labor-intensive.
Crawford, who runs a bio-design lab at the University of Colorado, Denver, aims to design a new technique that will be so cheap and easy that these bio-designed fabrics could eventually out-compete traditional leathers made from animal hides and even faux leathers made from petroleum-based products. To the touch, fungal leather f.
