I’ll preface this by saying that I don’t come from a culture that traditionally makes tortillas, and this isn’t meant to be or try to be an authentic recipe. This is just my own personal recipe,...
Exemplary
I’ll preface this by saying that I don’t come from a culture that traditionally makes tortillas, and this isn’t meant to be or try to be an authentic recipe. This is just my own personal recipe, along with explanations of how and why I do things that way. This is with the hope that it’ll be a nice introduction for people to start making their own tortillas, and at least interesting for people who know all of this already. It’s such a night and day difference versus store bought :)
What kind of tortillas do I like to make?
I personally like to make tortillas that are really thin, soft, and tender. As you can see from the picture, they’re semi-see-through. Sometimes I’ll switch it up to thicker tortillas/tortillas with baking powder, but this is my go to.
Choice of fats
The fat I used for the tortilla in the picture was clarified bacon grease, but any fat will work as a 1:1 substitute. The usual go-to fats for tortillas are regular pork lard or vegetable shortening, but any solid fat should work well without any real differences (barring flavour). More flavourful fats can be nice to experiment with, but like all cooking, it’s good to be conscious of how those flavours will pair with your filling. As an example, beef tallow makes really nice tortillas, but they taste a lot richer than regular pork lard.
What about oils?
You can use oils, such as rapeseed, but the texture won’t be quite the same. Oils coat the flour more evenly, which gives a more homogenous and softer texture for the tortilla. Using a solid fat gives a flakier, more toothsome texture because you have little pockets of fats. If you decide to go with the boiling water method, explained below, this will make less of a difference. I generally only use oils if I’m also doing the boiling method, otherwise I find the tortillas can become ever so slightly rubbery. This is especially true if you prefer a thicker tortilla.
Boiling water - pros and cons
The main reason I use boiling water is to denature some of the gluten forming proteins, so that the dough loses some of its elasticity. This vastly reduces the resting time needed, and makes it easier to roll the tortillas out. It also produces a softer, more tender tortilla - partly from the weaker gluten, but also because of the hydrocolloid properties of gelatinised starches. Pre-gelatinising the starches also helps the tortillas to stay fresher longer, if you plan to precook a few and reheat them in a pan later on. I also use it because, to a lesser extent, using hotter water also helps to hydrate the flour more quickly. This is also true of using warm water versus tap cold water.
It isn’t always ideal to use this technique, though. A more tender tortilla isn’t as structurally strong, so it’s harder to make something like a tightly wrapped burrito without it tearing. You’re also giving up some of the benefits of using a solid fat over an oil, because the fat will melt with the heat of the water.
Recipe
This will make six 20cm/8” tortillas, with 50g for each dough ball. If you use bakers percentages (explained here), you can of course scale it up and change the weights. For a 30cm/12” tortilla, I like to use 115g for each dough ball.
Once you find a weight you like for a certain size of tortilla, you can scale the weight up/down for different sizes using a scale factor. This scale factor would be the areas of a circle for the new size divided by the old size.
Ingredients
Percentage
Weight (g)
Plain Flour
100.00%
174
Water (boiling)
50.00%
87
Salt
2.50%
4
Lard
20.00%
35
In terms of technique, I’ll split it into mixing, rolling, and cooking. The only real difference boiling water will make to any of these steps is resting time, especially in between mixing and rolling.
Mixing
I mix together the flour and salt, and either work in the fat until sandy or mix in the oil. You can work the fat in by hand using the rubbing method, or cut it in using a fork or a pastry cutter. For larger batches, you can do this with a food processor. Then I mix in the water with a fork or a dough whisk, and leave it to hydrate. If you’re using boiling water, then five minutes is enough, but ten minutes works out better for cooler water. I’ll then knead it until it becomes smooth.
You can divide it up and shape into dough balls right away with boiling water, and roll them out after ten minutes of rest. If you’re not using boiling water, you’ll want to wait five minutes before dividing and shaping, and let the dough balls rest at least 30 minutes before rolling them out. All the resting time should be covered so that the dough doesn’t start to dry out.
Rolling
Note: At this point I usually start my pan preheating on low heat, I use a cast iron so it takes a little time to preheat.
Make sure your work surface is floured before starting. I then press a dough ball into the flour with the tips of my fingers until it’s a 7cm/3” disc, flipping it so it’s evenly floured. I personally like to use a French tapered rolling pin to roll out, as I find it the easiest to control the shape of the dough. You might want to again flour your work surface before rolling, to prevent sticking as the dough grows in size. You can use the flats of your fingers to spread the flour evenly over the surface. After each roll, I flip the dough to prevent sticking, and rotate the dough 90 degrees. I control the corners/roundness of the dough by applying pressure differently on either side of the rolling pin.
If you’re using a straight rolling pin, you might find it easier to do shorter rolls, and rotate it a little bit each time versus 90 degrees. It can also be easier to get a more consistent thickness by always working from the middle down. I only start cooking once all of my tortillas are rolled out, and I start with the one I rolled out first.
Cooking
At this point my cast iron is already pre-heated and evenly hot, so I move the heat up to medium/medium-high and let the temperature rise for a minute or so. I cook for 10-15 seconds between flipping the tortilla, about 45 seconds total for each one. You want to flip the first time once you see a lot of small/medium bubbles. The first tortilla will help you to gauge your heat: if it’s too hot, by the time you flip it, it’ll already have burnt spots. If it’s too cold, your tortilla will start to cook through before it browns enough, which can lead to dry tortillas that have no pliability and crack easily.
The most important step for cooking a tortilla is next: use a clean kitchen towel folded in half to store the tortillas in (or get a tortillero if they’re easy to find where you are!). This lets the tortillas steam as they cool, keeping them warm, soft, and pliable by the time you get the rest of your meal to the table.
How do I make them in bulk?
I've found the best way to make tortillas in bulk is to freeze the tortilla dough as dough balls. You can cook some off in bulk and leave them in a ziplock bag in the fridge for a few days, although I'd leave them slightly less browned than you want, so they don't dry out whilst reheating.
In the past I've tried to freeze pre-cooked tortillas, and found that whilst better than store bought, the texture still suffers. You can also pre-roll them, and layer them between parchment paper before freezing. In my experience, these succumb to freezer burn more quickly, and are harder to store.
I take dough balls and lay three to four on a strip of clingfilm that's a little over three times as wide as the dough balls. I can then fold the clingfilm over the dough balls, and cut evenly between the dough balls (kind of like making ravioli if you've ever seen/done that). This lets me wrap them with the least amount of plastic, and I store the wrapped dough balls in ziplock bags (like so). This helps to stop the dough sticking together, as well as preventing freezer burn for a lot longer.
Hopefully this all makes sense, is coherent, and I haven’t missed anything out. Please feel free to ask questions, offer improvements, share your own recipes/tortillas you’ve made, and otherwise add interesting info :)
Sub the lard for oil, and I just made the same dough for tarte flambee. Curious that that's almost completely the same dough. Maybe I'll have to experiment some with the stuff you mention here for...
Sub the lard for oil, and I just made the same dough for tarte flambee. Curious that that's almost completely the same dough. Maybe I'll have to experiment some with the stuff you mention here for my tarte flambees?
And make my own tortillas one of these days too. Considering the dough itself is a known quantity for me, I have no excuse except time.
At least in terms of boiling water, I would guess it depends whether you make tarte flambee with yeast or not. If you don't use yeast, I don't see why it wouldn't work, but you might run into...
At least in terms of boiling water, I would guess it depends whether you make tarte flambee with yeast or not. If you don't use yeast, I don't see why it wouldn't work, but you might run into issues with structure. Boiling water tends to make tortillas tear a little more easily.
You could also try using something like a source of inactivated yeast (like nutritional yeast). It's a good source of glutathione, which is broken down into cysteines by enzymes present in the flour. It's a reducing agent which breaks disulphide bonds between adjacent gluten strands, which diminishes some of the doughs elasticity but maintains its extensibility. I'd start somewhere in the range of 0.1-0.3%, which is the recommended range for bakery specific inactivated yeast, but you'd need to experiment with maybe going slightly higher. As far as I can tell, the processing of both products is slightly different and less of the cell walls in nutritional yeast may be broken, leading to less free glutathione.
Ohhh, that sounds like an interesting suggestion. I'm not using any yeast at all, I usually prepare them quickly so no time for a rise, and the water gives it enough of a rise to end up just...
Ohhh, that sounds like an interesting suggestion. I'm not using any yeast at all, I usually prepare them quickly so no time for a rise, and the water gives it enough of a rise to end up just barely flaky. I mean, it's not supposed to be a whole bread thing, just a thin wafer to top with deliciousness.
The limiting factor of how fast I can make tartes is usually the elasticity of the dough, so an additive that reduces that could be interesting.
I imagine the internal dough structure to be largely similar between the tortillas and tartes, they both end up quite tender. Of course baking vs. pan frying makes a difference - crispy, wafery crust on the tartes mostly.
Considering you know a thing or two: One thing I keep struggling with is getting the tarte to firm up in the center. The perimeter is usually reasonably solid, but I'm getting what pizza people call "droopy tip". The obvious solution would be to break out the pizza steel, but if I don't bother with that, this is something I can whip up in my lunch break (home office, yay), but a pizza steel just takes too damn long to heat up. Any creative ideas? Higher/Lower temps? Baking sheet, or is a grill preferable?(Is that the name? Wire frame thingamajig in the oven, is what I mean) Parchment paper or nah? (For reference, my current baking process is 200°C, baking sheet with parchment. 12 minutes or so.)
Makes sense, I imagine boiling water would definitely help in terms of resting/rolling out time if you're not using yeast. But if it's a little droopy, you might run into the structural issue I...
Makes sense, I imagine boiling water would definitely help in terms of resting/rolling out time if you're not using yeast. But if it's a little droopy, you might run into the structural issue I mentioned.
In terms of crisping it up better, I have a "regular" pizza suggestion, and maybe something else. The regular suggestion is that usually with pizza making it's suggested to go lighter on sauces/toppings in the centre than you would along the outside. As it cooks and the toppings redistribute, they tend to concentrate naturally into the middle more.
Otherwise, a baking sheet is good but unless you've had issues with launching/transferring it in the past I'd suggest not using parchment paper. Alternatively you could remove the parchment paper after the first minute or two once the dough has firmed up, just so there's no barrier between the dough and the steel of the baking tray.
You could also try pre-heating the baking tray on the stove top whilst you're rolling out/topping your dough, so that it gets a head start. I wouldn't get it rippingly hot, but preheated on the lowest temp will remove the time it takes to heat up in the oven. This also helps you cut corners a little with oven preheating, where you tend to find that you get top-down browning only with an oven that isnt quite up to temp. Depends how long your oven takes to preheat :) If it preheats fairly quickly you could try bumping the temp up to 210c so that the top cooks more quickly, especially if you're finding that the bottom now browns too quickly with the preheated baking tray.
It's hard to give anything concrete because there are so many factors that can affect it, but hopefully this gives you a jumping off point!
A few years ago I stumbled over a tortilla recipe with lard that has since made me a big advocate of lard as an ingredient. And it really makes great tortillas! I do prefer a slightly thicker...
A few years ago I stumbled over a tortilla recipe with lard that has since made me a big advocate of lard as an ingredient. And it really makes great tortillas! I do prefer a slightly thicker tortilla with baking powder, I think, though my girlfriend prefers the thinner.
The trick with boiling water is something I'm aware of but never really experimented with. I tried with pancakes, and the hassle of managing scalding hot water wasn't quite worth the results - but I ought to try it again sometime.
When rolling out the tortillas before cooking I tried flour to keep things from sticking, but found any trace amount of flour that hit the pan would end up burning and smoking the kitchen out - but maybe I was doing something wrong? I've since taken to keeping everything lightly oiled with a neutral oil instead - hands, dough and rolling pin. I also really like that slightly fried surface you get as a result.
Yeah, you can make great tortillas using an oil or other fats, but lard just has that little "something something" to it that works so well in a tortilla. It's been a lot easier for me to use...
Yeah, you can make great tortillas using an oil or other fats, but lard just has that little "something something" to it that works so well in a tortilla.
It's been a lot easier for me to use boiling water since we got a "one cup" boiler, which has a water tank like a coffee machine, and you just press a button to dispense 200-300mL of boiling water. You could also try using a microwave, but I live in a very soft water area and I'm always scared of spontaneous boiling.
I find with flour it's useful to try and use scant amounts a couple of times versus dousing it with flour, and rubbing the flour along the top to dislodge any excess and make sure it's even really helps. For longer cooking sessions I do tend to wipe out the pan after every few tortillas to make sure I don't get a build up of flour.
Thanks for the post, I love how in depth it goes. Have you ever tried to make tortillas using corn flour? Can't really get corn tortillas around me and for the most part the flavour of corn...
Thanks for the post, I love how in depth it goes. Have you ever tried to make tortillas using corn flour? Can't really get corn tortillas around me and for the most part the flavour of corn tortillas goes better with what I put in them.
I've made corn tortillas a couple of times, but you need to make sure you're getting masa harina as opposed to what's regularly sold as "corn flour" or "corn starch". Masa harina goes through a...
I've made corn tortillas a couple of times, but you need to make sure you're getting masa harina as opposed to what's regularly sold as "corn flour" or "corn starch". Masa harina goes through a special process called nixtamalisation, which is where the corn is treated with an alkaline solution. I haven't made them enough to really give much advice :)
I have a tortilla press, but I find they don't work well at all for flour tortillas. Wheat based doughs just have too much elasticity, so even if you can get them thin enough in the press, once...
I have a tortilla press, but I find they don't work well at all for flour tortillas. Wheat based doughs just have too much elasticity, so even if you can get them thin enough in the press, once you release the pressure they shrink back a lot. Very useful for corn tortillas, though :)
I echo this, I unfortunately managed to break several cast iron tortilla presses on flour tortillas before learning that they're meant for corn tortillas.
I echo this, I unfortunately managed to break several cast iron tortilla presses on flour tortillas before learning that they're meant for corn tortillas.
This is pretty similar to my recipe from a ratio perspective. I do add some baking powder because I like them to be a bit fluffy, and I also use olive oil as my fat purely from an attempt at...
This is pretty similar to my recipe from a ratio perspective. I do add some baking powder because I like them to be a bit fluffy, and I also use olive oil as my fat purely from an attempt at better health/diet perspective. I also use a 50/50 blend of whole wheat and white flour.
Sounds good! I wrote a low sodium fully whole wheat tortilla recipe for someone before due to dietary requirements. Do you find you have to increase the water much? For 100% whole wheat I ended up...
Sounds good! I wrote a low sodium fully whole wheat tortilla recipe for someone before due to dietary requirements. Do you find you have to increase the water much? For 100% whole wheat I ended up going for about 65% hydration.
I keep meaning to get around to trying scallion pancakes. They're super similar technique wise to lachha paratha, even though (as far as I know) they're not related :) The dough minus the lard is...
I keep meaning to get around to trying scallion pancakes. They're super similar technique wise to lachha paratha, even though (as far as I know) they're not related :) The dough minus the lard is also basically dumpling wrapper dough too
Yes! Dumpling wrapper dough was the one that surprised me the most, I always thought they were something else. Scallion pancakes aren't too bad to make, plus if you wrap braised pork and egg in...
Yes! Dumpling wrapper dough was the one that surprised me the most, I always thought they were something else. Scallion pancakes aren't too bad to make, plus if you wrap braised pork and egg in them, you make a type of Dan Bing that my mom loves to make for quick lunches or breakfast!
Thank you for this, I actually tried to make my own a couple of days ago after discovering the village shop had stopped selling them. It was mostly a failure (well, they were more like crackers)...
Thank you for this, I actually tried to make my own a couple of days ago after discovering the village shop had stopped selling them. It was mostly a failure (well, they were more like crackers) so I just tried this one.
It was... better... but the failing is mostly my own doing I think. I think had I any ability to roll in a circle and hadn't got the pan too hot it'd have worked well (and they still tasted better than two days ago). The pan temp is easy to fix, maybe I just need to commit to square tortilla wraps to combat the rolling issue.
Rolling will just come down to practice, and you've already identified the pan temp :) they taste the same no matter the shape, but good pan temp and resting them between a folded towel will keep...
Rolling will just come down to practice, and you've already identified the pan temp :) they taste the same no matter the shape, but good pan temp and resting them between a folded towel will keep them pliable. Keep at it!
I’ll preface this by saying that I don’t come from a culture that traditionally makes tortillas, and this isn’t meant to be or try to be an authentic recipe. This is just my own personal recipe, along with explanations of how and why I do things that way. This is with the hope that it’ll be a nice introduction for people to start making their own tortillas, and at least interesting for people who know all of this already. It’s such a night and day difference versus store bought :)
What kind of tortillas do I like to make?
I personally like to make tortillas that are really thin, soft, and tender. As you can see from the picture, they’re semi-see-through. Sometimes I’ll switch it up to thicker tortillas/tortillas with baking powder, but this is my go to.
Choice of fats
The fat I used for the tortilla in the picture was clarified bacon grease, but any fat will work as a 1:1 substitute. The usual go-to fats for tortillas are regular pork lard or vegetable shortening, but any solid fat should work well without any real differences (barring flavour). More flavourful fats can be nice to experiment with, but like all cooking, it’s good to be conscious of how those flavours will pair with your filling. As an example, beef tallow makes really nice tortillas, but they taste a lot richer than regular pork lard.
What about oils?
You can use oils, such as rapeseed, but the texture won’t be quite the same. Oils coat the flour more evenly, which gives a more homogenous and softer texture for the tortilla. Using a solid fat gives a flakier, more toothsome texture because you have little pockets of fats. If you decide to go with the boiling water method, explained below, this will make less of a difference. I generally only use oils if I’m also doing the boiling method, otherwise I find the tortillas can become ever so slightly rubbery. This is especially true if you prefer a thicker tortilla.
Boiling water - pros and cons
The main reason I use boiling water is to denature some of the gluten forming proteins, so that the dough loses some of its elasticity. This vastly reduces the resting time needed, and makes it easier to roll the tortillas out. It also produces a softer, more tender tortilla - partly from the weaker gluten, but also because of the hydrocolloid properties of gelatinised starches. Pre-gelatinising the starches also helps the tortillas to stay fresher longer, if you plan to precook a few and reheat them in a pan later on. I also use it because, to a lesser extent, using hotter water also helps to hydrate the flour more quickly. This is also true of using warm water versus tap cold water.
It isn’t always ideal to use this technique, though. A more tender tortilla isn’t as structurally strong, so it’s harder to make something like a tightly wrapped burrito without it tearing. You’re also giving up some of the benefits of using a solid fat over an oil, because the fat will melt with the heat of the water.
Recipe
This will make six 20cm/8” tortillas, with 50g for each dough ball. If you use bakers percentages (explained here), you can of course scale it up and change the weights. For a 30cm/12” tortilla, I like to use 115g for each dough ball.
Once you find a weight you like for a certain size of tortilla, you can scale the weight up/down for different sizes using a scale factor. This scale factor would be the areas of a circle for the new size divided by the old size.
In terms of technique, I’ll split it into mixing, rolling, and cooking. The only real difference boiling water will make to any of these steps is resting time, especially in between mixing and rolling.
Mixing
I mix together the flour and salt, and either work in the fat until sandy or mix in the oil. You can work the fat in by hand using the rubbing method, or cut it in using a fork or a pastry cutter. For larger batches, you can do this with a food processor. Then I mix in the water with a fork or a dough whisk, and leave it to hydrate. If you’re using boiling water, then five minutes is enough, but ten minutes works out better for cooler water. I’ll then knead it until it becomes smooth.
You can divide it up and shape into dough balls right away with boiling water, and roll them out after ten minutes of rest. If you’re not using boiling water, you’ll want to wait five minutes before dividing and shaping, and let the dough balls rest at least 30 minutes before rolling them out. All the resting time should be covered so that the dough doesn’t start to dry out.
Rolling
Note: At this point I usually start my pan preheating on low heat, I use a cast iron so it takes a little time to preheat.
Make sure your work surface is floured before starting. I then press a dough ball into the flour with the tips of my fingers until it’s a 7cm/3” disc, flipping it so it’s evenly floured. I personally like to use a French tapered rolling pin to roll out, as I find it the easiest to control the shape of the dough. You might want to again flour your work surface before rolling, to prevent sticking as the dough grows in size. You can use the flats of your fingers to spread the flour evenly over the surface. After each roll, I flip the dough to prevent sticking, and rotate the dough 90 degrees. I control the corners/roundness of the dough by applying pressure differently on either side of the rolling pin.
If you’re using a straight rolling pin, you might find it easier to do shorter rolls, and rotate it a little bit each time versus 90 degrees. It can also be easier to get a more consistent thickness by always working from the middle down. I only start cooking once all of my tortillas are rolled out, and I start with the one I rolled out first.
Cooking
At this point my cast iron is already pre-heated and evenly hot, so I move the heat up to medium/medium-high and let the temperature rise for a minute or so. I cook for 10-15 seconds between flipping the tortilla, about 45 seconds total for each one. You want to flip the first time once you see a lot of small/medium bubbles. The first tortilla will help you to gauge your heat: if it’s too hot, by the time you flip it, it’ll already have burnt spots. If it’s too cold, your tortilla will start to cook through before it browns enough, which can lead to dry tortillas that have no pliability and crack easily.
The most important step for cooking a tortilla is next: use a clean kitchen towel folded in half to store the tortillas in (or get a tortillero if they’re easy to find where you are!). This lets the tortillas steam as they cool, keeping them warm, soft, and pliable by the time you get the rest of your meal to the table.
How do I make them in bulk?
I've found the best way to make tortillas in bulk is to freeze the tortilla dough as dough balls. You can cook some off in bulk and leave them in a ziplock bag in the fridge for a few days, although I'd leave them slightly less browned than you want, so they don't dry out whilst reheating.
In the past I've tried to freeze pre-cooked tortillas, and found that whilst better than store bought, the texture still suffers. You can also pre-roll them, and layer them between parchment paper before freezing. In my experience, these succumb to freezer burn more quickly, and are harder to store.
I take dough balls and lay three to four on a strip of clingfilm that's a little over three times as wide as the dough balls. I can then fold the clingfilm over the dough balls, and cut evenly between the dough balls (kind of like making ravioli if you've ever seen/done that). This lets me wrap them with the least amount of plastic, and I store the wrapped dough balls in ziplock bags (like so). This helps to stop the dough sticking together, as well as preventing freezer burn for a lot longer.
Hopefully this all makes sense, is coherent, and I haven’t missed anything out. Please feel free to ask questions, offer improvements, share your own recipes/tortillas you’ve made, and otherwise add interesting info :)
Sub the lard for oil, and I just made the same dough for tarte flambee. Curious that that's almost completely the same dough. Maybe I'll have to experiment some with the stuff you mention here for my tarte flambees?
And make my own tortillas one of these days too. Considering the dough itself is a known quantity for me, I have no excuse except time.
At least in terms of boiling water, I would guess it depends whether you make tarte flambee with yeast or not. If you don't use yeast, I don't see why it wouldn't work, but you might run into issues with structure. Boiling water tends to make tortillas tear a little more easily.
You could also try using something like a source of inactivated yeast (like nutritional yeast). It's a good source of glutathione, which is broken down into cysteines by enzymes present in the flour. It's a reducing agent which breaks disulphide bonds between adjacent gluten strands, which diminishes some of the doughs elasticity but maintains its extensibility. I'd start somewhere in the range of 0.1-0.3%, which is the recommended range for bakery specific inactivated yeast, but you'd need to experiment with maybe going slightly higher. As far as I can tell, the processing of both products is slightly different and less of the cell walls in nutritional yeast may be broken, leading to less free glutathione.
Ohhh, that sounds like an interesting suggestion. I'm not using any yeast at all, I usually prepare them quickly so no time for a rise, and the water gives it enough of a rise to end up just barely flaky. I mean, it's not supposed to be a whole bread thing, just a thin wafer to top with deliciousness.
The limiting factor of how fast I can make tartes is usually the elasticity of the dough, so an additive that reduces that could be interesting.
I imagine the internal dough structure to be largely similar between the tortillas and tartes, they both end up quite tender. Of course baking vs. pan frying makes a difference - crispy, wafery crust on the tartes mostly.
Considering you know a thing or two: One thing I keep struggling with is getting the tarte to firm up in the center. The perimeter is usually reasonably solid, but I'm getting what pizza people call "droopy tip". The obvious solution would be to break out the pizza steel, but if I don't bother with that, this is something I can whip up in my lunch break (home office, yay), but a pizza steel just takes too damn long to heat up. Any creative ideas? Higher/Lower temps? Baking sheet, or is a grill preferable?(Is that the name? Wire frame thingamajig in the oven, is what I mean) Parchment paper or nah? (For reference, my current baking process is 200°C, baking sheet with parchment. 12 minutes or so.)
Makes sense, I imagine boiling water would definitely help in terms of resting/rolling out time if you're not using yeast. But if it's a little droopy, you might run into the structural issue I mentioned.
In terms of crisping it up better, I have a "regular" pizza suggestion, and maybe something else. The regular suggestion is that usually with pizza making it's suggested to go lighter on sauces/toppings in the centre than you would along the outside. As it cooks and the toppings redistribute, they tend to concentrate naturally into the middle more.
Otherwise, a baking sheet is good but unless you've had issues with launching/transferring it in the past I'd suggest not using parchment paper. Alternatively you could remove the parchment paper after the first minute or two once the dough has firmed up, just so there's no barrier between the dough and the steel of the baking tray.
You could also try pre-heating the baking tray on the stove top whilst you're rolling out/topping your dough, so that it gets a head start. I wouldn't get it rippingly hot, but preheated on the lowest temp will remove the time it takes to heat up in the oven. This also helps you cut corners a little with oven preheating, where you tend to find that you get top-down browning only with an oven that isnt quite up to temp. Depends how long your oven takes to preheat :) If it preheats fairly quickly you could try bumping the temp up to 210c so that the top cooks more quickly, especially if you're finding that the bottom now browns too quickly with the preheated baking tray.
It's hard to give anything concrete because there are so many factors that can affect it, but hopefully this gives you a jumping off point!
A few years ago I stumbled over a tortilla recipe with lard that has since made me a big advocate of lard as an ingredient. And it really makes great tortillas! I do prefer a slightly thicker tortilla with baking powder, I think, though my girlfriend prefers the thinner.
The trick with boiling water is something I'm aware of but never really experimented with. I tried with pancakes, and the hassle of managing scalding hot water wasn't quite worth the results - but I ought to try it again sometime.
When rolling out the tortillas before cooking I tried flour to keep things from sticking, but found any trace amount of flour that hit the pan would end up burning and smoking the kitchen out - but maybe I was doing something wrong? I've since taken to keeping everything lightly oiled with a neutral oil instead - hands, dough and rolling pin. I also really like that slightly fried surface you get as a result.
Yeah, you can make great tortillas using an oil or other fats, but lard just has that little "something something" to it that works so well in a tortilla.
It's been a lot easier for me to use boiling water since we got a "one cup" boiler, which has a water tank like a coffee machine, and you just press a button to dispense 200-300mL of boiling water. You could also try using a microwave, but I live in a very soft water area and I'm always scared of spontaneous boiling.
I find with flour it's useful to try and use scant amounts a couple of times versus dousing it with flour, and rubbing the flour along the top to dislodge any excess and make sure it's even really helps. For longer cooking sessions I do tend to wipe out the pan after every few tortillas to make sure I don't get a build up of flour.
Thanks for the post, I love how in depth it goes. Have you ever tried to make tortillas using corn flour? Can't really get corn tortillas around me and for the most part the flavour of corn tortillas goes better with what I put in them.
I've made corn tortillas a couple of times, but you need to make sure you're getting masa harina as opposed to what's regularly sold as "corn flour" or "corn starch". Masa harina goes through a special process called nixtamalisation, which is where the corn is treated with an alkaline solution. I haven't made them enough to really give much advice :)
Thanks for the in depth recipe. Out of curiosity, have you ever considered a press like these to flatten the dough? If so, what do you?
I have a tortilla press, but I find they don't work well at all for flour tortillas. Wheat based doughs just have too much elasticity, so even if you can get them thin enough in the press, once you release the pressure they shrink back a lot. Very useful for corn tortillas, though :)
I echo this, I unfortunately managed to break several cast iron tortilla presses on flour tortillas before learning that they're meant for corn tortillas.
This is pretty similar to my recipe from a ratio perspective. I do add some baking powder because I like them to be a bit fluffy, and I also use olive oil as my fat purely from an attempt at better health/diet perspective. I also use a 50/50 blend of whole wheat and white flour.
Sounds good! I wrote a low sodium fully whole wheat tortilla recipe for someone before due to dietary requirements. Do you find you have to increase the water much? For 100% whole wheat I ended up going for about 65% hydration.
Yeah, it's somewhat higher. My measurements are:
300g 50/50 flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
50g olive oil
225g hot water
It's funny, minus the lard, and you've basically made teh dough for one of my favorite dishes, scallion pancakes!
I keep meaning to get around to trying scallion pancakes. They're super similar technique wise to lachha paratha, even though (as far as I know) they're not related :) The dough minus the lard is also basically dumpling wrapper dough too
Yes! Dumpling wrapper dough was the one that surprised me the most, I always thought they were something else. Scallion pancakes aren't too bad to make, plus if you wrap braised pork and egg in them, you make a type of Dan Bing that my mom loves to make for quick lunches or breakfast!
Thank you for this, I actually tried to make my own a couple of days ago after discovering the village shop had stopped selling them. It was mostly a failure (well, they were more like crackers) so I just tried this one.
It was... better... but the failing is mostly my own doing I think. I think had I any ability to roll in a circle and hadn't got the pan too hot it'd have worked well (and they still tasted better than two days ago). The pan temp is easy to fix, maybe I just need to commit to square tortilla wraps to combat the rolling issue.
Rolling will just come down to practice, and you've already identified the pan temp :) they taste the same no matter the shape, but good pan temp and resting them between a folded towel will keep them pliable. Keep at it!