Tag Archives: how to

home made flour tortillas

Posted on by

8

tortilla main

Tortillas are often taken for granted. We just fill them and eat them without so much as a second thought. It’s unfortunate, really, since your typical store-bought tortilla is completely boring, flavorless and dry.

I wanted to go back to what I used to enjoy on my trips to Mexico, to what our exchange students Ana and Kendra would make. Most of the recipes I found called for baking powder – an ingredient I didn’t recall in their tortillas. I did try a baking powder recipe once (thinking it would give my tortillas lift) and I ended up with hard, flour frisbees. Supposedly if you go past the first one or two tortillas, they end up less frisbee-ish, but I never made it that far (I’m easily discouraged). I’m sure there’s no way the baking powder recipes would be so prevalent if everyone had the same results, so by all means try one of those if you like.

So finally, I asked Kendra for her recipe, which would have made enough to feed an army, scaled down it resembled a recipe I came across on the kitchn. So, I went for it, mashing the recipes, with what i remembered from our visits to Mexico, I finally found a suitable tortilla. Simple ingredients, subtle flavor.

Just flour, salt, fat, and water. That’s all you really need. You can roll them very thin, or keep them a little thicker if that’s what you’re into. I like to cook mine on the grill; everything is better on the grill. You could also add extra spices to the flour mixture, or even a bit of whole wheat, but I like to keep mine simple (you don’t want the tortilla’s flavor to overpower what you put in it). Although, I’ve been known to snack on just the tortillas…

Home-Made Tortillas

[ Printable Recipe ]

  • 2 3/4 cups All Purpose Flour
  • 3/4 teaspoon Salt
  • 5 Tablespoons shortening
  • 3/4 cup Warm Water

Whisk together flour and salt. Add cubes of shortening and mush through your hands until the mixture forms coarse crumbs (alternatively, you could use a food processor, it depends on how motivated you are).

Add water to flour mixture and stir or work with hands until a dough is formed (if using food processor, pulse until it comes into a ball)

Knead gently until dough comes together; roll into 10 – 15 balls, depending how big you want your tortillas. Toss balls into the same bowl you used to mix them for storage, covering with a damp towel to keep them from drying out. Let rest about 30 minutes. (This 30 minutes is a good time to cook your taco filling, giving it time to rest while you get back to your tortillas)

 

 

 

 

 

Flatten with a press and/or rolling pin until they are your desired level of thinness. I like to flatten mine with the press AND roll them (the press gets them much closer to a circle shape than they would otherwise end up).

 

Cook over medium-high heat on a nonstick skillet or grill until bubbly. Flip and continue to cook, should take about 30 seconds per tortilla. Be careful not to burn them, if that means you have to flip them a little more often, go for it. Wrap in foil and/or a kitchen towel until it’s time to serve.

* If you use a tortilla press, be sure to place plastic wrap (or a ziploc bag with the sides cut open) over the press to make your tortillas easier to remove (otherwise they will just end up stuck to the press)

* You can make the tortilla balls a few days ahead of time, keep them covered in the refrigerator and use them throughout the week to always have fresh tortillas on-hand.

* If going the food-processor route – whir flour and salt together. Add shortening and continue processing. Stream in water and pulse until dough forms a ball. Pour onto counter and knead into cohesive dough, then roll into balls.

[ Adapted from the kitchn & my good friend Kendra ]

How to: Clarify Butter

Posted on by

0

 

butter

I don’t really do seafood, so I’m not even going to pretend like I ate these. In fact, since I don’t enjoy seafood, this was the first time in a long time BF had the joy of eating crab.The one thing he needed from me for this feast? Butter. Clarified butter, to be exact. Continue reading →

Bagel Face Off – Round 1

Posted on by

3

dsc090452They are both very similar except that one uses malt syrup in the dough, while one uses the malt syrup in the water bath & one allows more rise than the other. Chow’s uses malt syrup in the dough and barely any rising time in the process, which made them faster, easier, and a much better candidate after an IKEA time warp this weekend made me shorter on time than I’d have liked.

the ever-elusive malt syrup

This batch was all salt bagels – because they are BF’s favorite. Next batch will have more variety, so that I can pawn them off on the general population who love bagels that aren’t covered in coarse salt 🙂

This batch came out great- they were dense, chewy, and perfectly-sized. The recipe makes 12  goldilocks-sized bagels. The ones at the store either come in giant size, or miniature size, these ones fall perfectly in between. The malt syrup added a slight sweet-tang that is found in gourmet bagels.  Win! These will be hard to beat – but I’ll be sure to update you on how the stack up against the SE bagels which claim to have tricked NYC bagel aficionados into thinking they were purchased and not hand-made… we’ll see, SE, we’ll see…

Chow’s Bagel Recipe – Adapted from Chow.com

Printer-Friendly Version

  • 1 1/2 cups yeast-friendly water (105°F to 110°F)
  • 1 (1/4-ounce) packet active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
  • 4 C bread flour
  • 2 Tbs malt syrup
  • 2 Tbs kosher salt
  • 4 teaspoons sugar
  • 1 large egg white + 1 Tb water (for egg wash)
  • Desired topping

1. Pour yeast packet into water and set aside. Combine flour, malt syrup, salt, and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook . Add yeast mixture to flour mixture and mix on low until “shaggy”. It’ll look something like this:

2. Increase speed to medium-low (I put that at about a 2 for my mixer) until the dough is smooth, elastic, dryer, and somewhat stiff. (Stiffer than you think it should be).

3. Once mixed, shape into a ball and toss in oiled bowl, cover, and set in a warm place for about 20 minutes to rest. (It will not double, but should be noticeably puffy. Mine kinda looked like a brain)

4.  While the dough is resting, preheat the oven to 425F. Fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil, cover and simmer until ready to use. Line a baking sheet with parchment.

5. When your dough is ready, divide into 12 3-oz pieces (these were perfect size to fit in my hand, slightly larger than golf-ball sized). As i divided the dough, I threw the 3-oz balls back into the bowl and kept them covered.

6. Once your dough is divided, roll each ball (one at a time) into a 9-inch rope, the shape that rope into a bagel by dampening the ends with water, wrapping the rope around your fingers, and smooshing the ends together.

*Alternatively, you could poke a hole in the middle of the ball, and just stretch that hole until it is quarter-sized. I will try that way next time and let you know how it goes

7. Set bagel loops onto the parchment-lined cookie sheet, and cover with a damp towel. Let rest for about 10 minutes.

8. After resting, re-stretch the hole to be quarter-sized. Plop your bagels into your simmering water a couple at a time. Initially they will sink, just poke them so they don’t get stuck to the bottom of the pan, and when they look wrinkly and float, remove with a spider and set back onto parchment-lined cookie sheet.

9. Brush egg-wash over bagels and sprinkle with desired toppings. Bake in 425F oven 20 – 30 min until golden-brown. Remove from oven and cool on rack 30 min before eating (or 5 minutes if you have a hungry monster in your house who you can’t defend them from)