Among the Wild Flours

May 2nd, 2023

Wheat flour is by far the most common flour we use today.  Modern wheat is bred for productivity, ease of harvesting, and ease of processing... though not necessarily for enhanced flavor, to be easily digestible, or for its regional adaptability and resilience. Wheat truly is an amazing and versatile annual grass that we have come to grow extensively around the world, but what of other flours? Older varieties of wheat and other similar grains exist like einkorn, barley, spelt, farro, rye, and kamut with unique flavors and fascinating stories. 

But what about wild flours? Flours can be made from anything really. Often they are made from ground-up seeds or nuts, occasionally the flesh of fruits or vegetables, and even the husks or outer seed pods. So many flours exist around the world that are rich in flavor and micronutrients sadly lacking in many modern grains! So what of our land's own wild flours with their unique flavors and colors? 

Wild flours aren't new, and they've been used for thousands of years. Flours made from acorns, amaranth, beans, buckwheat, cactus seed, cattail pollen, chestnut, chickpea, corn, dock seed, flaxseed, hazelnut, lotus nuts, maple seed, mesquite pods, millet, mushrooms, peas, plantain seeds, smartweed seeds, squash, teff, vegetables, walnut, wild greens (powdered), wild rice, and wild grass seed ... and so many more! 

Let's dive into a few of these! 

But first, a word of CAUTION: If any of these wild harvested foods are new to you, take the time to go slow and get to know them! Make sure there aren't any dangerous look-a-likes of the plants you are harvesting and be mindful of where you harvest them. Also if you are in an urban area or alongside an old and busy road, for instance, be particularly mindful of contamination from lead, pesticides or other contaminants. Water pollution is another issue if harvesting along a streambank, lake or riverway. Just be mindful of where and how you harvest. And listen to your body. If something tastes terrible or makes you feel awful, don't eat it. It could be your body's way of saying it doesn't agree with you for some reason, even if the same plant was perfectly fine for someone else. 

Acorns: When you realize how to use acorns, suddenly the woods are full of food! Many indigenous cultures around the globe were very familiar with this nutrient-dense food! But there is a challenge. As you might know, most acorns are high in tannins, making your mouth pucker with the bitterness, which can also cause problems if you eat too much of them. To use and truly enjoy acorns, we typically have to remove the tannin with either a hot or cold water processing method. In his book Nature's Garden, Samuel Thayer has an amazing chapter on processing acorns and Alan Bergo's article with The Forager Chef on using and making acorn flour. Here are some pictures of me using a coffee grinder to grind up the VERY hard acorns, and a cold leaching method for emory oak acorns that have amazingly low tannin content. For those in the Southwestern US, John Slattery has some amazing resources on his methods for processing the amazing bellotas or the Emory oak acorn. Here are some pictures of me below using a cold leaching method to remove tannins. I'll dry the flour after I let it soak for a bit!

Cactus Seeds: Did you know that many cactus fruits are edible? Some of the ones I've eaten are saguaro, prickly pear, cholla, pincushion, and barrel cactus. And many of their seeds can be used to make delicious, nutty, and nutrient-dense flours... who knew? Think of these "flours" as how you might use ground flax meal in a recipe. To add flavor and nutrition. Barrel cactus seeds can be scooped out from the plant and dried. Raw they are a bit bland, but roast them, and they are astoundingly good! You can dry and grind up the fruit too (many have light, refreshing flavors like lemon, fig or watermelon-like) and make seed and fruit flour blends. For more information on harvesting cactus, check out the www.DesertHarvesters.org website.

Maple Seeds: Did you know maple seeds that fall in the spring are edible? You can eat them as a snack while hiking (though when raw they have a slightly bitter aftertaste, especially as they get older). Or you can boil and roast them to make them taste sweeter. OR you EVEN boil, roast and grind them up into flour to sprinkle onto salads, in soups, over roasted foods or use a few nutrient-dense tablespoons here and there in recipes for flavor! I first learned about eating Maple Seeds from The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen by Sean Sherman and Beth Dooley, an awesome book I recommed checking out! 

Nut meals: Nuts like hazelnut, chestnut, lotus, almonds and walnuts - make a protein-rich nut meal which generally can be substituted for a portion of the wheat flour in a recipe. Many gluten-free recipes exist now that use nut meals. Wild nuts can easily be used in these flours, too! 

Plaintain, smartweed, and wild grass seeds: I hadn't realized how many weeds have edible seeds! They can be sprouted, eaten fresh while hiking, or dried and ground into flour?  Many wild grasses are direct relatives of our most prolific annual crops: rye, barley, spelt, wheat, and corn ... And smartweed (or prostrate knotweed as it is called) is a relative of buckwheat (another cultivated grain). If you want to dive more into this topic of edible and prolific weeds all around us, I recommend Katrina Blair's "Wild Wisdom of Weeds: 13 Essential Plants for Human Survival" where she describes many recipes for these three, all too common 'weeds' found at high and low elevations across the globe. 

Wild green powders: Did you know that the young leaves of violets, alfalfa, mallows, grape, chickweed, dandelion, clover, nettles, mint, lambsquarter, and plantain are just a handful of the MANY edible new greens in springtime. These plants are fairly mild tasting (though try them as you collect them to see!) and can be tried to make a nutrient-dense green powder or flour to be added to a smoothie, into baked goods, in soups or sprinkled into a pesto. They are rich in vitamins, nutrients, and trace elements that are absolutely amazing for your health. Katrina Blair's book (mentioned above) dives into this option in more detail. If these plants are new to you, go slow! Take the time to get to know these plants and be confident in their ID - and listen to your body! If they don't agree with you for any reason, don't eat them. 

Vegetable and fruit flours: Did you know you can dry and grind up vegetables as flour, too? We all have probably had potato bread, but did you know other vegetables can work well, too? Sean Sherman in The Sioux Chef has a recommendation for dried squash flour where he lays out strips of winter squash (with their seeds and skin included!) to dry on a baking sheet. Once dry you can blend in a coffee grinder or strong blender to create a wonderful flour that can be used in any number of ways! 

We have a unique opportunity to reconnect with our landscapes by working with wild flours. An opportunity that doesn't require monoculture crops, but diversity and resilience. It's an opportunity to improve our health, the health of our guts, and the ecological resilience of the landscape around us.

Two Simple Wild Flour Recipes: 

There is an absolute wealth of flavors and textures around us. With more and more people struggling to digest our modern-day wheat, it seems like an opportunity to branch out and learn more about the many flours around us. The variety feeds us in more ways than one. It feeds our gut microbiomes with the diversity of foods supporting a diversity of healthy microbes in our guts, and it feeds our bodies with much higher concentrations of micronutrients than modern cultivated crops. Wild foods - even in small amounts - can offer us incredible nutrition, energy, and immune support!

And the flavors!  Oh... the flavors are superb! Yet wild flours are different than wheat. We must play to their strengths to use them successfully! If we do, we will be rewarded with incredible flavors, trace elements that support our health and immunity, and an opening of possibility to the world of wild flours all around us!

There are a few recipes that are SO easy to substitute in a wild flour. Often these recipes don't completely depend on the unique qualities and strength of gluten. Like crepes. Since wild flours often have stronger flavors than all-purpose wheat flour, I add about 2-4 tbsp in place of regular flour in this crepe recipe. The more wild flour, the less bendable your crepe will be. The recipe is "per egg". A one-egg recipe makes about 6 crepes. A two-egg recipe makes about 12. Scale up to make as many crepes as you want.

1 egg

1 cup milk (or milk substitute)

1 tbsp melted butter (or oil)

1/2 cup wheat flour (substitute out 2-4 tablespoons of your wild flour)

1/4 tsp salt

2 tsp sugar (or something sweet like maple syrup, honey, dried fruit flour or a mashed banana)

Mix wet ingredient together - whisk in melted butter to keep from combining. Mix dry ingredients together in a separate bowl. Combine. Pour about 1/4 cup onto a hot greased skillet on medium heat. Crepes are ready to flip when they form holes at the edges that don't collapse in on themselves. Serve with sweet or savory toppings. Makes about 6 crepes. 

2. Sour Milk (or Buttermilk) Biscuits

This is an awesome recipe to have in your back pocket if your milk is just about to turn sour. The sourness adds to the flavor! Scones, muffins, and biscuits generally have help from a raising agent like baking soda or baking powder to help them "puff up"... making them GREAT candidates to use wild flours. You usually substitute anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 of the regulat wheat flour with a wild flour or wild flour blend. But be careful of flavors!!!  Mild-tasting flours are best like nutty-tasting acorn meal, mesquite flour, or mild nutmeals would be just fine. Just limit any strong-tasting flours to 2 tbsp or less and be careful of too many conflicting strong flavors... Strongly flavored flours might include buckwheat, certain vegetable flours like beet powder or cactus or wild greens powder. When I make this recipe, I give my 5-year old all the flours I have and say... fill up this measuring cup with whatever ones you want! It generally turns out well!

2 cups all purpose flour (I substitute up to 1  cup for a wild flour or wild flour blend)

1 tbsp salt

4 tsp baking powder

4 tbsp cold butter or lard 

1 cup sour milk (or buttermilk... or milk mixed with lemon juice...)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Mix dry ingredients together. Mix fat and flour mixture together until they form pea-sized lumps (crumble together with your fingers). Make a well, and pour in the milk. Knead until slightly sticky. Flour a surface and gently knead a few times. Roll out and cut. OR dollop onto cookie sheets in blobs if you want to skip the kneading bit. Bake 8-10 minutes until lightly golden brown. 

Resources:

Nature's Garden by Samuel Thayer (great chapter on acorns)

Alan Bergo's article with The Forager Chef on making acorn flour: https://foragerchef.com/how-to-make-acorn-flour/

Processing Acorns with John Slattery: https://www.johnjslattery.com/blogdefunct/2019/7/19/how-to-process-acorns-for-food

 The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen by Sean Sherman and Beth Dooley

Wild Wisdom of Weeds: 13 Essential Plants for Human Survival by Katrina Blair 

www.DesertHarvesters.org website - great resource for eating wild foods in the Sonoran Desert


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