Tangerine Travels: Acorns: Hearty Flour Source

Acorns are all over my back yard, so I was curious about how they had been used as food in the past. Acorn flour is one way to access their nutrients, so I bought some at the Korean Market. I then needed a good recipe, so I found a wonderful Acorn flour Cake recipe at http://honest-food.net/veggie-recipes/acorns-nuts-and-other-wild-starches/acorn-flour-cake/.

This recipe calls for a mixture of wheat flour and acorn flour, and is easy to make! The acorn flour is darker than wheat flour, and the kind I bought was finely ground. There is honey and some sugar in this recipe. I baked them in a cupcake pan with baking cups lining the pan. I did this because the recipe I was using sometimes makes a crumbly cake, so I thought this would make them less messy.

Acorn flour is high in manganese and vitamin B6. It can be used to replace chestnut flour in recipes. Acorns contain toxins, so it is important to remove the toxins during processing. I took the easy route and bought my acorn flour after it had been processed. But acorns can be collected in the wild and processed through grinding then washing and drying.

The picture on the left shows my batter with the acorn and wheat flour mixed. Notice how dark it looks.

Native Americans and many other people around the world have historically used acorn flour. Some of these people baked their acorn flour bread with clay included in the dough. The mineralogy of the acorn bread clays is effective in adsorbing toxins and adding trace minerals to the bread according to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The clays were found to reduce the toxicity of acorns by as much as 77%, and to potentially provide 38% of the adult RDA of Calcium. For more information go to http://www.goodhealthnaturally.com/files/Eating%20Clay%20-%20Lessons%20from%20Worldwide%20Cultures.pdf.

The main toxins in acorns are tannic acids, which luckily can be removed by leaching with water, particularly warm water. These toxins can also make dogs sick and could be fatal in high concentrations. Different kinds of acorns carry different concentrations of tannic acids.

Acorns were mentioned as nuts in a Chinese agricultural text in the 6th century. As much as 20% of the diets of some people in Spain and Italy were acorns before 1900. For more information about human consumption of acorns, go to http://www.ecocomposite.org/native/acorns.htm.