Tortillas

[Ozwald]

Just made a batch of homemade tortillas. Tasty. After I pulled the last one off I took the first one with some shredded cheese & made a mini cheese quesodilla. Not as good as the ones Mama Linda used to make, but then I'm not a 60 year old Mexican woman who was born and raised in rural Mexico.

I made a few adjustments to the dough on the fly but this is the approximate recipe:

3 cups white flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons baking powder

6-8 Tablespoons fat (I used cold butter, most recipes will say lard or shortening)

1-1.25 cups warm water

--Mix up dry ingredients
--Cut in fat with pastry cutter (make sure it's cold) until crumbly
--Add water to form a sticky dough, fold and knead several times. It should become a bit less sticky.
--Let dough rest 10-15 min
--Form golf balls, let rest again 10-15 min
--Heat oiled iron skillet or nonstick pan to the point where it's ready to smoke
--:nutters: Roll out your balls into paperthin discs
--Place disc on skillet until it starts to bubble up (~30 sec), flip, bubbles, pull it, place on plate, cover with towel
--Lather, rinse, repeat

Let them sit on the plate for 10 minutes or so before you try one (the first one's ready when you pull the last one off the heat, basically). Super quick, super simple, way better than the ones from the supermarket. A quick tip, while cooking the first side you can check if the center is done by lightly pressing on it. If it stays indented & is a little darker, the inside is still doughy. Roll your balls thinner or perhaps your skillet isn't hot enough. If they bubble too early, your skillet is a little too hot.

[spiderwrangler]

I'm not a 60 year old Mexican woman who was born and raised in rural Mexico.

No, but I hear you still put on one hell of a donkey show.

Want to play around with a corn tortilla version for my gluten free wife and get back to me?

[Ozwald]

Want to play around with ... my ... wife and get back to me?

I'll look into it

Edit:

After a little digging I found a pretty apparent trend. Masa Harina. It's basically a flour made from corn. You may have to go to a Mexican grocer to find it, but I did see some pretty big names producing it, so it very well may be at the local supermarket (probably not around here though, you'll likely have pretty good luck in your neck of the woods though). All else fails, Amazon.

The recipes were very similar after you make the dough. The dough was pretty close 1:1 Masa to water, some a little less on the water, nothing else. Seems pretty straight forward if you've got a little experience baking. The dough is going to be a bit sticky while working it, but it should come out pretty smooth. Too sticky, add Masa, too dry, add water. Also you don't have to let it stand at all since that's for the baking soda & to relax the glutens. Mix the two together, aim for a slightly sticky dough, if you can't knead it smooth in 10-15 folds (each separated by a few minutes of kneading) tweak it with the appropriate ingredient. After that, it should be pretty much the same. Since I don't have easy access to the Masa, I'll leave it for you to tweak out, but I'll add a tip that may come in handy. Since I'm sure you've seen a finished flour tortilla before & the 'bubbly' texture it has, that's what you're looking for in the pan when you flip it. Since corn tortillas look slightly different, but still have that slight bubblewrap look to them, that would be the signal I'd look for.

I'm not a huge fan of the corn tortillas & the masa's not easily available here so I probably won't dig much further (although quartering them & deep frying some fresh chips with some homemade mango salsa sounds tempting) definitely give it a try & let me know how they turn out. I might have to go the Amazon route & do some chips - and for anyone who's never fried tortilla chips before... it's fun & dangerous at the same time. Good ventilation & double frying them are key.

[Bokonon]

I'm not a huge fan of the corn tortillas & the masa's not easily available here so I probably won't dig much further (although quartering them & deep frying some fresh chips with some homemade mango salsa sounds tempting) definitely give it a try & let me know how they turn out. I might have to go the Amazon route & do some chips - and for anyone who's never fried tortilla chips before... it's fun & dangerous at the same time. Good ventilation & double frying them are key.

I buy my flour tortillas from a local tortilla shop, they're the best. Their corn tortillas are far better than anything else you can get at another store but I'm not a huge fan of them. The only way I eat corn tortillas is if we make them at home. They are awesome and really simple to make.

Cast iron is the way to go for cooking tortillas, they aren't quite the same in teflon or stainless

[Ozwald]

I buy my flour tortillas from a local tortilla shop, they're the best. Their corn tortillas are far better than anything else you can get at another store but I'm not a huge fan of them. The only way I eat corn tortillas is if we make them at home. They are awesome and really simple to make.

Cast iron is the way to go for cooking tortillas, they aren't quite the same in teflon or stainless

I used to, but the quality has gone downhill over the last few months & the last package I bought were completely unusable. I found the Don Pancho tortillas to be excellent - for a commercial made product anyways - so I switched over to those but I don't go into the city very often anymore (and all this town has is a gas station, a post office & a couple bars). Then I remembered Mama Linda's breakfast burritos & made a few test batches yesterday.

Mama Linda was this woman I worked with 10-15 years ago & she was the crew's 'mom'. She'd bring in these mini breakfast burritos every time she had the early shift, completely made from scratch. Delicious. I didn't quite replicate hers, but I got close enough that I'm happy with them.

I did mine in a non-stick pan & they were fine, but that was just because I couldn't find my iron skillet. I'll have to pick up a new one I guess. I also couldn't find my rolling pin - I ended up flouring a Nalgene bottle which worked surprisingly well. I think I'll just make a new hardwood pin instead of buying one though.

[PseudoChef]

Flour tortillas are something that once you make at home you can almost never have a large-factory produced one again. I generally make a batch of 16 fajita sized ones a week - they're good for so many things.

My process is very similar, although I do use lard. The solids first + hot water helps reduce gluten formation and the resting helps roll them out.

For corn, it's just masa harina (corn treated with lime and then made into flour) and water. You can add some salt if you'd like. They don't roll out like flour tortillas, so a press works well. You'll want to line the press with parchment or saran wrap or the tortillas all stick.

[PorkSlapper]

When I can I buy my tortillas from a little shop in Mattawa, Wa. Never ever go to Mattawa for anything other than fresh totillas or to do a drive by shooting.

[mordantly]

pictures or it didn't happen fellas!