Hi Locust,

I just started processing white oak acorns about a month ago, but I hot leach them and use them for baking breads & pancakes. I ground the first batch in a coffee mill before leaching which was too fine of a grind that stuck togother in a mass during drying. Since then I've been grinding them rougher in a food processor for leaching and regrinding in the coffee mill after they are dried. The rough grind helped immensly with the sticking problem during drying.

One of the recipies I've made is acorn meal/corn meal bread. It calls for 2 tbls of flour & 1 tbls maple syrup. I'm sure you could leave out the flour to avoid gluten. It probably wouldn't rise as well. I don't know why anyone would leave out maple syrup, but you could.

HTH

A couple of reasonably good books on acorn preparation that I have in my personal library are:

It Will Live Forever: Traditional Yosemite Indian Acorn Preparation, by Beverly R. Ortiz(as told by Julia F. Paker)
published by Heyday Books, P.O. Box 9145, Berkeley, CA 94709
Deals with traditional acorn preparation(primarily from Q.kelloggii)

Acorns and Eat 'em, by Suellen Ocean
Printed at Old Oak Printing, Potter Valley, CA; I got my copy from the now-defunct Bear Creek Nursery. Might be able to find it at Amazon or B&N, etc. Has a decent field guide to tree ID, modern preparation tips, and about 30 different acorn recipes.

There's another one that I've seen, but don't currently have, entitled something like: Ooti: The Gift. No so good as the two previous ones, so far as preparation tips or recipes are concerned, though.

Here's a TAMU site on acorns - with some squirrel & 'possum recipes, as well:
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/plantanswers/recipes/squirrel.html

Here is a link that might be useful: Harvesting the Wild: Acorns

Thanks for posting the book titles and link Lucky. The link is one of the sites I read and have bookmarked. Including squirrel recipes shows some foresight. I had a basket of acorns outside drying and some squirrels ate them. Have you made acorn meal?

This is another website I read.

Here is a link that might be useful: naif

Cold leaching does keep the glutinous quality, BUT you have to reheat the starch with water to a hot enough temperature for that gelatinous thing to happen. It won't show up in breads and pancakes the same way. The hot leaching pre-cooks the starch that gels so you lose that quality. A food dryer can be used to dry the drained leachings so you can grind it into flour again. I found a lot of acorn information at www.prodigalgardens.info - a lot of useful links.

Acorns are a good, traditional human food. The blandness is no more a problem than the blandness of rice - acorns will take to any seasoning. The thick boiled porridge makes great fried "cornmeal" mush - you can put anything you want into it - cut it into cubes and serve with veggies and gravy - really, the possibilities are endless.

Thanks for talking about acorns!!

Wow, this thread's still active after all this time!

I've got a collection of oak seedlings and graftlings growing here, selections made for low-tannin acorns by myself and other oak enthusiasts - mostly bur oak, swamp white oak, and white oak - or hybrids of those and other members of the white oak group.
I've eaten some SWO acorns from one of the selections, right off the tree, that were non-bitter; sort of like a bland chestnut - not much flavor, but nothing to make you spit and sputter. I may never have to depend on them for food, but I've got 'em growing here just in the event that at some point I need 'em, I'll have 'em available.