{"id":3409,"date":"2015-05-31T21:12:10","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T03:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/?p=3409"},"modified":"2016-11-03T21:59:54","modified_gmt":"2016-11-03T19:59:54","slug":"making-tortillas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/making-tortillas\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Tortillas"},"content":{"rendered":"

My neighbour Caroline sent me home with her barely used tortilla press the other day. Today, she came by with a giant container of corn flour and a recipe, so I decided to try my hand at making tortillas!<\/p>\n

The recipe for 16 to 20 tortillas is super simple:
\n2 cups corn flour
\n2 cups boiling water
\n1\/2 tsp salt<\/p>\n

Mix in a big bowl until you get a ball, cover with plastic wrap, and let sit for an hour. Then divide into 1 1\/2 inch balls that you press and then cook on a hot griddle\/cast iron pan\/comal.<\/p>\n

So here is her press:<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0565\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It has a hinge on the side. You open up the two halves, put a ball of dough in the middle between plastic (to prevent sticking — she uses two halves of a Ziploc bag), press firmly to flatten the ball, peel the resulting raw tortilla off the plastic and plop it into a very hot frying pan (I use well seasoned cast iron, so I don’t add any grease) to get this:<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0564\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Rather impressive looking for a first attempt, no?<\/p>\n

This was nothing like the tortillas I get at the tortilleria in Maz. Neither is better or worse, they are just different. The main difference is that these are cooked in a cast iron pan, so they are crunchier and have brown spots (the best part). But I usually heat up my tortillas anyway and get close to this result.<\/p>\n

The colour is also different. These came out very yellow, like tostadas. The tortillas I get at the tortilleria are beige.<\/p>\n

Finally, these were a little bitter. I think the flour might be a little old, or it’s just not the same flour used in the tortillerias. It definitely has a much more pronounced corn flavour. They are going to make killer totopos (fried tortilla chips)! I want to repeat the experiment with proper Maseca brand flour to see if I get closer to the tortilleria tortillas.<\/p>\n

But the final verdict is that making these was most definitely worth my time. I didn’t like them much on their own (bitter), but were really good slathered with a little leftover tomato sauce! They are a little fluffy in the middle and feel like wheat bread under tooth (!).<\/p>\n

I scoffed at the idea of a tortilla press, but it really is labour saving. Imagine the work and space that would have been needed to roll out the dough into a semblance of a circle!<\/p>\n

I only made three tonight and saved the rest of the ball of dough for tomorrow morning. Making tortillas is a lot less work than making flat bread with flour and I look forward to making mountains of them this summer. Considering the price of crappy corn tortillas at the grocery store, the time spent will be worth it!<\/p>\n

So yay for Caroline for giving me a chance to try this out before buying Maseca!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My neighbour Caroline sent me home with her barely used tortilla press the other day. Today, she came by with a giant container of corn flour and a recipe, so I decided to try my hand at making tortillas! The recipe for 16 to 20 tortillas is super simple: 2 cups corn flour 2 cups […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[632,4,6,635,807,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canada","category-haven","category-homemaking","category-north-america","category-saskatchewan","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}