Doughs and Batters, Other Doughs and Batters, Starch

Tortillas

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Homemade tortillas coming out of the skillet.A while back I wrote a list of food items that I don’t think you should ever buy because you can easily and cheaply make something at least as good at home.  As time goes on Lisa and I strike upon simple recipes and quick techniques that add items to the list.  Most recent are tortillas, the kind made of wheat flour.[1]

There are loads of tortilla recipes online.  We’ve tried several, and most are garbage, producing tortillas that are either too dense and doughy or way too delicate to stand up to filling and wrapping and eating out of hand.

We use a food-processor to mix the dough.  It takes less than 5 minutes.  With a small amount of lard and proper mixing, these tortillas have a great texture, soft and pillowy but robust and pliable enough to be rolled into burritos.

Tortillas
the wheat kind…

Ingredients

  • 320 g all-purpose flour
  • 1 + 1/4 tsp kosher salt
  • 55 g lard
  • 170 g cold water
  • extra flour for rolling out dough
  • extra lard for frying

Procedure

  1. Put flour, salt, and lard in the bowl of a food processor.  Run processor until lard has been broken up into very small pieces evenly distributed throughout the flour.
  2. Slowly pour the cold water into the flour mixture with the processor running.  The dough will come to together, eventually forming one large ball that rolls around the bowl as the blade moves.
  3. Remove dough from processor and knead briefly on a lightly floured counter until smooth.
  4. Wrap dough in plastic and let rest one hour.
  5. Preheat a heavy cast-iron skillet over medium heat.
  6. Cut dough into 8 pieces of even size (each portion will be just under 70 g if you want to get serious about it).  Shape each portion into a ball.
  7. Roll out each portion into a circle about 8″ across.
  8. Lightly brush the skillet with lard.
  9. Put one of the raw tortillas into the skillet.  Once it has puffed and has developed a few dark brown spots on the underside flip the tortilla.  Once the second side has developed a bit of colour remove to a plate.
  10. Repeat steps 8 and 9 until all the dough has been used.

Yield: 8 tortillas

 

Notes
1. I’ve always thought it weird that people call these “flour tortillas” to distinguish them from “corn tortillas”. Both types are made from flour! One from wheat flour, the other from masa, a flour of nixtamalized corn.