Acorn Flour

Ingredients

Some Acorns. As fresh off the tree as you can (not ones that are sprouted or cracked or have been on the ground a few days).

Procedure

Wash the acorns thoroughly. Drain off water.

Place the acorns on a baking sheet in a single layer.

Place baking sheet with acorns in an oven set to 180F. Prop the door of the oven just slightly open (a wooden spoon handle is good) so the moisture from the acorns can escape. Leave acorns in the oven for three hours at 180F.

Remove acorns from the oven. Smash them with a hammer, a rock, the car, whatever you can do which is appropriate to the scale of the acorns you have in your batch.

Pick the meat of the acorns out of the smashed pile. A pick or cocktail fork is very helpful here. You don't want any of the hard outer shell, but the inner papery covering on the meat is fine. Put all the meats you collect into a bowl.

Fill the bowl of meats with fresh cold water and rinse the meats off. Drain the water (allowing loose particles and bits of shell that float to drain off, but keeping the meats). Do this rinsing process a few times.

Fill the bowl with fresh cold water once more and agitate the meats again.

Changing the water twice a day, let the meats sit in cold water for five days. Every time you change the water, agitate the meats and drain off any loose particles or shell bits you missed.

After five days of water changes, the tannins in the meats should be leached out. Drain the meats and spread them in a single layer on a baking sheet.

Place the baking sheet in the oven at 180F and prop the oven door open a little again with a wooden spoon handle or something small. Leave acorn meats in the oven for four hours, or until very dry and a bit dark.

Remove the nut meats from the oven. Grind them in a coffee grinder, a burr grinder, or a mortar and pestle. A food processor probably won't do. You're looking to get a flour with the consistency of espresso coffee grounds - fine, but not as fine as wheat flour, for example.

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