Walking through the forest, most people never realize how much food is growing all around them. Sure, most people know you can tap maple trees for syrup and that you can collect acorns from oak trees. But what about the others?
Birch trees are edible in a number of different ways. Birch trees can be tapped for syrup, and the nutritious sap is used medicinally in Eastern Europe.
The early spring buds are aromatic and flavorful if you can catch them before they break bud. But beyond that, the inner bark can be made into a surprisingly nutritious flour, containing 500 to 600 calories per pound of flour.
Now that I’ve tried it, I found that it tastes quite a bit like buckwheat flour, and it makes delicious cookies.
TRADITIONAL USE OF BIRCH BARK
Birch bark flour is made by harvesting the inner bark that carries nutrients from the roots up to the leaves. The outer bark is used to make baskets and buckets, like traditional sap buckets, but the inner bark is the edible part.
Birch bark was traditionally harvested by the Sami people in Northern Sweeden. While some references say that bark bread was a survival food, there’s evidence that it was eaten even in times of plenty.
According to Nordic Food Lab, a group that researches traditional Nordic foods, “There is no indication in our records that historically well-known famine years resulted in more bark being peeled in those years.” They found that it was a staple food source in the 1600s and 1700s.
There is some evidence that eating bark flour bread was actually a sign of wealth…
…click on the above link to read the rest…
