Bay laurel seeds are a locally sourced food transformed into a flour to add deep coffee-chocolate flavors to baked goods, and may be prepared and consumed as a boost of caffeine instead of coffee. The seeds are healthy food, with nutritional value.
They can be roasted and ground in a coffee grinder, and then infused in hot water to create something between coffee and hot cocoa, or used to create cocoa-texture products.
However, the seeds contain stimulants that are similar to caffeine, and can provide gastrointestinal distress in some if taken in large doses.
As with any new food, it’s always best to experiment with caution when starting out.
How Are Bay Laurel Seeds Edible?
The seed of the bay laurel is a black, bizarre nut-like object resembling a small avocado.
When it is fresh, it resembles an avocado pit surrounded by a thin layer of green flesh.
When ripe, the flesh turns from a brilliant green to a purple hue, and the whole nut is floral and spicy but turns immediately rotten.
You can roast them, skin them, and grind them into a fine, oily powder.
You roast them to remove the intense volatile oils that might irritate your throat and digestive system.
The flavor tastes like a combination of dark chocolate and harvested coffee beans.
It has a dessert-like delicacy that you do not very often discover from foraged plants. It’s simply, tremendously, excitedly, an edible wild plant that everyone loves and enjoys.
Bay laurel seeds have an extremely astringent and a bitter flavor, similar to uncured olives or acorns, and should not be consumed prior to roasting.
After roasting, remove the hard shell with a nutcracker or with a hammer, being careful not to destroy the inside; you can eat them or try to utilize them creatively in various parts of baking.
What to expect: They will have a somewhat bitter flavor, but excellent for people who enjoy very dark chocolate.
How to Process Bay Laurel Seeds
Foraging and Preparation
The best time to collect seeds is in the fall when they fall off trees naturally.
Select seeds that haven’t been sitting on the ground long based on the state of the fleshy outer husk.
The fleshy outer husk is often brown and tender, but on occasion, you may find seeds without the fleshy outer husk, which is even better.
Picking Up Rotting Seeds Is Not a Good Idea
Remove any decomposing seeds and the remaining flesh to reveal a shiny brown seed approximately the size of a hazelnut as soon as it is possible before the various visual colors decay.
Rinse the nuts to release any excess “goop” from their surface, then lay them on a cotton towel or in a baking pan to allow any remaining moisture to dry out over a period of two weeks.
They will then be ready to go into the next important step, roasting.
Bay laurel seeds should be stored in a paper bag or open container in the dark.
Good idea: You may keep the seeds in this fashion for up to two years before roasting them.
Roasting and Eating
Spread the nuts out in a single layer on a baking sheet in a preheated oven of 350°F, and roast for a few hours. Roast until the nuts are lightly brown and black on the inside. Some nuts will shatter open during the roasting.
Once the nuts are roasted, take them out of the oven and use a nut cracker to open the shells when they are done.
Once you have the inner seed meat back on the baking sheet, roast them for 30-45 minutes; you may want to crank the oven up to 450°F. Only stir every ten minutes while you are checking for scorching from roasting.
The bay nuts will show color change from tan to milk chocolate brown to dark chocolate brown to black-brown when overdone; a well-roasted bay nut will be a dark chocolate brown color like a roasted coffee bean.
Avoid Roasting Too Long
When it comes to roasting nuts, and especially bay laurel seeds, if they roast too long, they will taste bitter and charred.
Bay laurel seeds can go from underdone to overdone very quickly; therefore, check the seeds frequently until you find them at the brown stage.
Once it looks like the average seed is properly colored, take the tray out.
You can store the seeds in an airtight container for months.
TIP: The seeds alone have a flavor like a coffee bean and a cacao bean crossed; but, they can also be enjoyed with some sugar such as honey or agave nectar.
Final Thoughts
A bay tree doesn’t always have laurel seeds, and if they do, as early as September or possibly even earlier in a hotter year.
A few years are better than others, and some years there are very few seeds; just because you do not find seeds on a tree in one year does not mean you will not find seeds the next.
You want to place the bay laurel seeds, with shells still on, in a pan on the middle rack in your oven at 350 degrees for about 10-15 minutes, or until the seeds split open.
If you are unable to roast the nuts right away, you should remove the fruit remains and dry them out while leaving them uncovered.
The essential oils that are still in the bay tree seed that has not been roasted long enough make them extremely pungent and inedible, but if you roast them too dark, they are equally too intense and inedible.