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Just because I was a bit bored yesterday, I collected a bunch of live oak (Quercus agrifolia) acorns from a tree near my house to make acorn bread with them. Here's the procedure I cobbled together after reading several web pages about how the American Indians around here used to do it.

Collect acorns, tossing any with a hole or crack. All species of acorn are edible after leeching, but the tannin levels vary from 0.4% (white oak) to 20% (red oak). The tannins are very bitter and maybe slightly toxic, making raw acorns inedible for humans.

Shake each acorn and if the nut moves around it is bad, toss it.
Float them. Wormy ones tend to float, good ones sink. Toss the floaters. Only one of my batch floated.
Whack them with a hammer and collect the nutmeats with a tiny spoon. This is most of the work. Put on music or watch a video.
Again, toss the bad ones. Some look rotten.
Boil them in repeated batches of water from 30m to 3h until the water no longer turns brown. Boiling loses some flavor but is more hygenic than just letting them sit in water for a few days, which is an alternate method. Indians used to put them in bags in a river and let the river leech out the tannins.
Remove the nutmeat skins each time you add new water because the skins have a lot of the tannins. The skins float so they're easy to pick out.
When the acorns are bland and not bitter, they are edible.
Toast at 250F for minimum of 60m, until they are dry. If the oven gets humid, prop the door open.
Fill a food processor 1/3 of the way, and blend into flour in batches.

To make the bread:

1 cup acorn flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 egg beaten
1 cup whole milk
3 tablespoons salted butter

Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Grease a loaf pan to prevent sticking
Combine acorn flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a bowl
Combine egg, milk, and butter in a bowl
Stir the wet and dry bowls together to create a lumpy batter
Pour the lumpy batter into the greased pan
Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes in convection oven



Right now I'm toasting them. I'll post about how the bread turns out.

A big oak tree can produce 1000 lbs of acorns in a season, so it's surprising they are not used more. Maybe they'd be good for animal feed.