Found a small bag of pine bark flours from a store in Helsinki. The flours are made from the dried phloem of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris). I think its a speciality limited to Finland and Karelia. It does not taste like pulp, as someone might believe. On paper it is rather impressive: more nutrients and vitamins than most fungi and berries native to Northern Europe. However it is very hard to come by even in Finland although the raw material, i.e pines, are easy to come by. I know only one producer in Northern Finland. I highly recommend trying it if you ever come to Finland. Naturally one can also order it through online from certain stores.
Pine Bark Flours
- Thread starter Martti
- Start date
Bark flour was widely used all over scandinavia back in the harsh days.
In Norway theres a few (one or two) that still makes traditional "flatbrød" (flat bread) with a mix of bark flour and regular flour.
How ever, I'm not sure if one can buy bark flour in the stores anymore, maybe except for some special/health stores.
In Norway theres a few (one or two) that still makes traditional "flatbrød" (flat bread) with a mix of bark flour and regular flour.
How ever, I'm not sure if one can buy bark flour in the stores anymore, maybe except for some special/health stores.
My Father is German. In the war his parents were killed and he lived with his Aunt and Uncle who were bakers. He still bakes his own bread (sourdough of course!) and once told me how they used to roll the loaves in beech sawdust. I've always wondered whether he might have been mistaken and it was really beech mast flour... but from reading this I'm now thinking we might both be wrong and it was as you suggest some kind of bark flour.
Leo
Leo
The Wartime Farm series touched on making bread when the main ingredients were in short supply, along with using silage they did use saw dust.
The pine bark flour sounds interesting, could I make some myself? I'm currently trimming some lower branches from my Scots Pine so can get hold of the inner bark. Is it a simple matter of drying it out and grinding or would it need to be processed in any way?
The pine bark flour sounds interesting, could I make some myself? I'm currently trimming some lower branches from my Scots Pine so can get hold of the inner bark. Is it a simple matter of drying it out and grinding or would it need to be processed in any way?
The most easiest way is to collect the bark in spring. Collect the inner bark in one piece if possible. Either boil or scorch the bark for two hours after it has been collected and then let it dry. Finally grind it into flours.
Thanks for that, I'll pop a piece in my billy can and give it a boil. I also have a manual corn grinder so should be able to mill it ok when dried.
As for recipes, we make most of our own bread so can try adding some of the bark flour into a mix. I gather traditional recipes use rye flour? I'm not overly keen on rye so might try simple brown flour or spelt to start with.
There was different kind of breads depending what the people had on their hands. A simple receipe first recorded in the mid-18th century mention mixing rye and bark flours with water. I think you should start with no more than few percent of bark flours to the total weight flours used. A documentary recommends adding bark flours bit by bit and tasting after adding the flours.
It would be fun to have a play with some bark flour.As I have my own bakery it wouldn't be a big hassle.
If you guys find a recipe would you mind posting it? Presumably the barks are all gluten free so maybe
useful in that diet too. Usually the maximum of such exotic flours I would add to wheat or rye would be
about 10% by weight , adjusted to taste after the first batch.
If anyone else has a go in the meantime , please post some pics.
Cheers , Simon
If you guys find a recipe would you mind posting it? Presumably the barks are all gluten free so maybe
useful in that diet too. Usually the maximum of such exotic flours I would add to wheat or rye would be
about 10% by weight , adjusted to taste after the first batch.
If anyone else has a go in the meantime , please post some pics.
Cheers , Simon
Interesting to hear that it's actually sold as a produce 
I only know of it as toasted sheets and then ground into flour. Tasted slightly sweetish mealy kind of flavour. Apparantly the season of harvest matters
Do you think that you could buy a packet and maybe read the packaging and see if there's any company details on it that we could investigate further ?
cheers,
Toddy
I only know of it as toasted sheets and then ground into flour. Tasted slightly sweetish mealy kind of flavour. Apparantly the season of harvest matters
Do you think that you could buy a packet and maybe read the packaging and see if there's any company details on it that we could investigate further ?
cheers,
Toddy
Elen Sentier
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Not sweet sweet, but definitely not bitter or 'plain'.....rye like sweet, maybe ....it's awfully hard to describe. Not like acorn flour, not like chestnuts can be either. You know how very little sweet that winter birch sap is ? just that hint, not a Spring sap that's got potential ?
Boiled for two hours ?? it's a famine food, usually famine foods are cooked in fuel poverty too.....roasted near the hot coals until it looked like toast, cooled it and it was dry enough to grind up, was all that I did with it.
Xylaria might be better at this description and use than I am, and Fergus the forager too
cheers,
M
Boiled for two hours ?? it's a famine food, usually famine foods are cooked in fuel poverty too.....roasted near the hot coals until it looked like toast, cooled it and it was dry enough to grind up, was all that I did with it.
Xylaria might be better at this description and use than I am, and Fergus the forager too
cheers,
M
May have to have a go in the Spring.We have a lovely fruity rye sourdough culture that sounds like it will work well with the flavour of the bark.
Sometime in March then? I'll post some pictures when we do it.
Cheers , Simon
Sometime in March then? I'll post some pictures when we do it.
Cheers , Simon
Either one can be used but a Finnish study shows that cooking might be a bit more effective method to remove the excess tannins and resins from the bark.
Sounds reasonable...but the inner bark wasn't at all tanniny.....that's what I meant by not like acorns, which really, really can be.
Interesting to read that it's not just Scot's pine cambium that can be eaten too though
cheers,
M
Interesting to read that it's not just Scot's pine cambium that can be eaten too though
cheers,
M
Elen Sentier
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Not sweet sweet, but definitely not bitter or 'plain'.....rye like sweet, maybe ....it's awfully hard to describe. Not like acorn flour, not like chestnuts can be either. You know how very little sweet that winter birch sap is ? just that hint, not a Spring sap that's got potential ?
Boiled for two hours ?? it's a famine food, usually famine foods are cooked in fuel poverty too.....roasted near the hot coals until it looked like toast, cooled it and it was dry enough to grind up, was all that I did with it.
Xylaria might be better at this description and use than I am, and Fergus the forager too
cheers,
M
Mary, help me out here as you're an archaeological buff ... famine food? Now, wouldn't our hunter-gatherer come pastoralist ancestors have used this? They rarely suffered famine, not being farmers, but had a very good lifestyle. So maybe it was famine food to the farmers but perhaps a nice add-on before that when we still lived with the land rather than owning it?
The amount of tannins depend of the age of the tree and the time of the year. It usually various from one to two percent of dry weight. Younger trees ranging from 20 to 60 years of age have a higher tannin percentage than e.g. trees of 80 to 250 years of age. The highest tannin contents were measured during May and September, the lowest in December. The amount of tannins is the lowest near the root of the tree.
We have direct evidence from the last 1000 years or so, but clearly it is possible that various people around the boreal zone would have used the bark as a viable food source before the Common Era. Modern-style log houses have been existed for the last 2000 to 5000 years and bark had to be removed before the logs could have been utilised. I have a description from the year 1911 of the bark being utilised by the Sámi people in Northern Finland. Howeve, they did not make bread out of it but kind of a porridge by mixing it with water and/or with fish fat.
