Faith Cathcart/The Oregonian Beneath the loamy forest floor lie knobby nuggets prized by serious foodies. Hunting truffles with dogs, as Jean Rand does with her Lab, Gusto, helps protect trees and plants and ensures only ripe truffles are dug up.

Yesterday, the Oregonian published an article on the subject of truffle hunting dogs. Although pigs are the traditional truffle hunters, the story says dogs are now more popular.  They can sniff out ripe truffles while leaving immature ones undisturbed to grow more flavorfully pungent and pickable. The article says:

“. . . dogs quickly root out deeper, bigger specimens, often in brushy areas people avoid. Such targeted foraging protects the tree roots, threadlike mycelium (the cells that spawn truffles) and forest loam, which indiscriminate raking destroys, says the Corvallis-based North American Truffling Society. France and Italy now largely rely on dogs. Heftier hogs were hard to transport; dogs hop in the back seat of a car. Dogs also are less prone to gobble up the unearthed morsels.”

Oregon truffles are less sought after than European truffles, some think, because Oregon truffles are often dug up too young and therefore with less flavor and aroma. If more people train dogs to pinpoint only mature specimens, the logic goes, Oregon truffles could improve their image.

“It doesn’t take a pooch with a fancy pedigree to find truffles. You can imprint any mutt with the scent, but it could take months or years for success in the field. Trained scent-detection dogs are ideal. Everything from beagles to German shepherds, even to miniature dachshunds, can be trained to track truffles.”

The Oregonian also published an article on how to select and cook with Oregon truffles.

Paul Beckman with truffle inoculated hazelnut sapling © Guy Hand 2009

On another aspect of Northwest truffles, I produced an Edible Idaho radio show awhile back on one man’s attempt to bring truffles to southern Idaho: It’s called Truffle Fever.