Food falling from above

The other day I decided to take a walk in the woods because the weather was absolutely gorgeous. The sun was shining in a perfectly blue sky, a gentle breeze was blowing, crickets were singing, and ... acorns were falling. To be honest, I was nervous that one would crash onto my head because there were so many of them dropping. Whenever I heard an acorn start falling through the leaves above me, I would swiftly place my hands on my head in a feeble attempt to protect it from possible harm. Any onlookers would have probably thought I looked like a marionette... with my arms being controlled by some unseen force :)

Then the thought came to me, "why not collect acorns to make acorn flour," something I've been wanting to try for a long time. So that's exactly what I did... I started collecting right then and there. 

This was just one spot along a trail full of acorns

I believe the acorns I picked where from the White Oak tree. The acorns from the White Oak have very little tannins, which is good when wanting to make acorn flour. Check out more info on the White Oak

When I got home I began the process of shelling them. Here was my work station. The shelling process took a lot longer than I expected.

Look at the beautiful acorn "meat"

It's a good idea to gather more acorns then you think you will need because you may find that some are infested by worms or other insects.

At this stage you may be tempted to take a bite out of the delicious looking nut, but don't! It will taste bitter! Though White Oak acorns are not as bitter as Red Oak for example.

I ended up shelling about 2.5 cups of acorns. Notice how the water I placed the acorns in is turning yellow/brown. This is the tannic acid starting to leach out. (The 2.5 cups of whole acorns made about 1.5 cups of acorn meal)

Once I had the desired amount of acorns, I drained the water and replaced it with clean water. Then I blenderized the whole thing until the acorns were ground up. I poured the milky looking mixture into a pot and cooked it until it had boiled for a couple of minutes, stirring continuously. (As a side note, though I stirred continuously, the bottom of my pot still burned... not sure why.) Also, I found out that I should have put the acorns into already boiling water.

After the mixture had boiled, I drained it into a "cheese cloth" which I had placed in a colander. I then ran cold water through it several times to make sure it was cool enough to handle and to supposedly rinse out any residual tannic acid. (WARNING: I found out later that normally you do not want to rinse your acorns with cold water after boiling because it will bind the tannins to the acorn, the opposite of what I was trying to do.) The boiling process also removes some of the oils, so if you want to keep that, you may choose another method of leaching your acorns. You can taste the acorn meal at this point and if it still tastes a little bitter, just rinse a few more times. Thankfully, the White Oak acorns have less tannins and my acorn meal did not turn out bitter despite my mistake.

After squeezing out all the liquid, I was left with this lovely acorn meal. I ended up blenderizing it one more time to make it a bit more fine. If you decide to use it right away, no need to do anything further, it's ready for use. However, if you want to store it for later, it's best to dry it in an oven or food dehydrator until all moisture is gone.

And here is my finished acorn bread

I have to say, it sure tasted good, but I hardly noticed any acorn flavor, which was kind of disappointing.

For those interested in the acorn bread recipe, here it is:
1 cup of acorn meal (with as much liquid squeezed out as possible)
1 cup white flour
2 Tbs baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 Tbs sugar
1 egg, beaten
1/3 cup of milk
2 Tbs olive oil

pout into greased loaf pan and bake for 30 minutes at 400F.

In my excitement to prepare acorn flour I failed to do as thorough research as I should have into how best to prepare them. There are many sites with various ways of processing acorns, but I found out that traditionally there are two main ways of leaching out the tannins: the cold water leaching (best for making flour and will thicken when cooked) and the hot water leaching (best when using them for their nutty flavor). I think I accidentally did a mixture of both and thus probably removed some of the flavor from my acorns. Though I know I made some mistakes in the processing of my acorns, I was thrilled to have finally attempted the process of preparing the acorns and actually tasting them. I will have to try again sometime and be more careful about the steps :)

Here are a few sites with more information on acorns and other ways to process them.
Acorns: the inside story
Acorns: from mush to candy
Acorn processing and recipes  - this site is awesome, with quite a few recipes