Making Tortillas: Further Observations on the Art of Making Bread

For anyone who read my article on making bread who is saying "Oh, but that's only if you are trying to make yeast bread." I invite you to try making tortillas, an unleavened bread. The recipe is the most simple bread one can imagine flour, salt and water if you have some fat to add it will make a tastier bread. What could possibly go wrong with such a basic dough? Plenty.

I offer my first experience in trying to make tortillas from scratch. I tried to pat them out the way I watched our neighbor do. I got flour all over the kitchen. The dough stuck to my hands until they looked like something from a horror movie. When I tried to cook the few I managed to get in approximate tortilla shape even that proved far more difficult than I thought it would. If they didn't cook long enough the middles stayed raw. When I got the middle cooked the outside was burned and then after all that they were inedible.

Eventually I did succeed in making tortillas, but I had to give up on patting them out in my hands. I don't do pizza dough that way either. I know my limitations.

Tortillas

I used the following recipe:

2 cups of flour

2 Tbs. shortening

1 tsp. salt

¼ cup water

Sift flour and salt together into a large bowl. Mix shortening in until you have a dry dough of pea sized particles. Add water and mix until you have a soft dough. Divide into twelve equal sized pieces. Roll into balls. Flour hands and pat out on a piece of floured wax paper. Shake off excess flour and cook on hot griddle until done.

And, even though that reads as though any dumbkoff could do it just remember I had a mess that took me hours to clean up-sticky hands-and flour all over my kitchen. The tortillas looked more like demented biscuits patted out too thin. About half of them had burned areas because I had the griddle too hot. They were edible, barely.

It took me hours to get my kitchen clean. When you watch a skilled tortilla maker at work she makes it look so easy, chatting with family or friends as she pats and tosses her tortilla until it is just the right size before tossing it on her griddle. By the time she is ready with the next one it has cooked to perfection. What there isn't is flour all over the table, floor and walls.

While I can make tortillas now I've never mastered the art of patting them out with my hands. I now use a lightly floured board and a rolling pin. Not the way of a master tortilla maker, but I gave up on acquiring that title long ago.