Acorn Bread (yuu-pitlaš)

As tradition built it

Acorn Bread (yuu-pitlaš)

Rumsen and Chochenyo Ohlone

Ingredients

The method as the tradition gives it, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them, lead dishes first.

• acorns
• to cover water, for leaching

Method

1. Follow the genuinely six-month process Louis Trevino (Rumsen Ohlone), co-founder of Café Ohlone by mak-'amham, describes: from the acorn's autumn drop through grinding, curing and leaching in water.
2. Work the flour until fine enough to pass through the weave of a basket.
3. Once the flour is fine and fully leached, bake or griddle the dough into a denser bread than the soup's mush, eaten as its own food rather than an accompaniment.

Notes

The Chochenyo Ohlone name for the finished flatbread, yuu-pitlaš, was recovered by Vincent Medina's work reconstructing the Chochenyo language from 1920s and 1930s recordings of its last fluent speakers.

What a modern chef changes

Consistency of drying, not compression of time

Method

1. Do not propose shortening Trevino's six-month cycle with a dehydrator or any other equipment: the slowness is not a limitation the tradition is waiting to be freed from, it is the actual mechanism by which the flour reaches its finished fineness and flavour.
2. Where a British kitchen can genuinely help is consistency of drying conditions during the parts of the cycle that call for it: hold a dehydrator at a low, steady temperature rather than leaving the flour in an unheated shed at the mercy of British autumn weather.
3. Offer this as a practical concession to climate, not an attempt to compress six months into six days.