Dock seed flour

[Suffolkrafter]

I finally got round to precessing the broad leafed dock seeds I collected over the summer.
I had stored them after drying to a crisp in the sun, but over the weeks they seemed to have taken on a little moisture, so I dried them out in the oven again.
I removed the chaff by rubbing the seeds between my hands. A kitchen seive served fairly well as a means separate the seeds, and shaking the resulting mixture on a baking tray further separated everything by size.
Grinding in a pestle an mortar was a pain, and took several days of on-and-off grinding to get something resembling flour. Of course someone with reasonable arm stamina would have done it in an hour...

Now to the cooking. I wanted to try different ratios of dock seed to plain white flour, followed by mixing to a dough and frying as a sort of flat bread. I wanted to see how little white flour I could get away with.
My conclusion was that 2 parts white flour to 1 part dock seed worked well. The dough was a good consistency and the flavour nice. 1 part white flour to 2 part dock seed flour worked ok and I was able to generate a flat bread that didn't fall apart, but I found the flavour of the dock seed a bit bitter.
Here we are, looks delicious right?

 

[punkrockcaveman]

Excellent

I've used a similar process with nettle seeds, a friend has a burr coffee grinder that he uses for stuff like this- invaluable!

 

[Toddy]

Interesting read thank you for sharing.

I admit that didn't do it that way, though it seems 'tidier'.

I roasted them off by passing the dried heads through a flame. They flare and crackle and then go out. Let them cool and then just winnow them off. Probably a lot more wasteful than your method too, but I had an awful lot of dockens.
I didn't notice any bitteness doing it this way, but I'm not sure what it does to the nutritional content.

M

 

[Suffolkrafter]

I roasted them off by passing the dried heads through a flame. They flare and crackle and then go out. Let them cool and then just winnow them off

That's an interesting method, I'll have to try that next time. How did you use the seeds ultimately?

I've used a similar process with nettle seeds

Nettles seeds are on my list of things to try. I've thought of getting a grinder actually. I want to have another go at acorns this year so it would get plenty of use. That reminds me, beech nut season is almost upon us.

 

[Toddy]

I find I ache too much these days to pound and grind stuff up in the mortar, so I bought me a coffee grinder that I only use for stuff like this. It has been excellent, but small. We bought a bigger grinder/jug thing and I think if I were doing acorns again, I'd use that instead.

I used the docken seeds for flour for bannock and I used it to thicken stew. I used honey in the bannocks and the taste was a bit like roasted sesame.

If you strip the seed heads off the dockens and put them into a bowl, you can 'throw' them through the flames, like tossing them for winnowing, and they'll catch flame enough but drop back, roasted, into the bowl. It's quite dramatic, kind of show off stuff, like tossing pizzas around, but it works It can also be an unholy panic of a mess !