sharing info on acorns

Hi Kevin, nice to have you on permies.com.
I've been around you youtube channel and a lot of great videos. I was watching acorns permaculture, and for what I remember, I read it in some book, acorns don't grow every year because the plant to survive doesn't produce every year so that wild animals don't get used to always having a food source every year from them. This way the acorns in the year of major produce have a higher possibility of getting to germination before they are all eaten. I'll try to find where I read this information. Do you have information on acorns to share? I tried to make flour but I did something wrong it wasn't great.

Oh Acorns don't have gluten too!

Yes, most oak species don't make crops of acorns every year (or at least don't make large crops every year). The reason you gave is generally accepted, but sometimes debated. There are many species of oak here that have so much tannin in them I think it's quite impractical to leach them. So start with an oak that is generally low tannin, and that helps.

Acorns do not have gluten, no, but they have a gluten like property to them that allows the acorn flour to stick together quite nicely. However, this property only remains after they have been cold leached (as opposed to hot). I also think hot leaching, although faster, reduces flavor as well.

About acorn flavor, it's flour. No one thinks that flour mixed with water taste good, but billions of people love bread. Acorns should be thought of the same way. I think the flour is much richer and full bodied than even whole wheat flour, and I very much enjoy it.

I'll try cold leaching then. thanks.
we had recipes for bread and cakes in Sardinia and Umbria two regions but everything is lost, when I tell my firends I want to eat acorns they look at me with a strange face, who cares I'll show them it's good I love cooking and using flour for bread and pizza so I'll just get on to it when it's time

A piggyback question:
I have only sporadic access to utube, and have yet to find a written description of "peel the acorns". How is this done? I have teeny tiny acorns, and not enough time to tackle them with a pocket knife! Surely there is a more efficient way?

Acorns have a shell that should be easy to crack open. That is step 1. Some acorns species have an additional husk or skin, others do not. I like to stick to the ones that do not if I can, but otherwise I think you are on your own as far as how to remove the husk (peel) from the type acorns you have. The larger the acorn, the easier they are to work with. Lucky for me here, I have the Valley Oak (Q. lobata.) There is an art to lightly roasting the acorns that makes the husk easier to remove, you might try that. Don't cook them at a high temp though, again it's an art I would say. Otherwise, you might try a knife, I know that I have actually peeled them with fingernails in the past. So whatever works.