Tortilla Time

So I make my own tortillas pretty regularly and I've had my ups and downs with them.  But I think now I've finally worked all the bugs out of this recipe, so I'll share my adaptation with you!

Katie at KS got it from someone else and changed it, and now I've changed it.  In the original post, she talks about why she makes her own tortillas... and I agree with her.  But the short story is: it's always healthier homemade than buying the store-bought-processed version.  Next time you buy whole wheat tortillas, check out the ingredients.  There's like a thousand.  And most of them unrecognizable!  (To me.)  Oh, and they aren't usually cheap.

So making them myself takes time, but I think it's worth the peace of mind to have a clean ingredient list.  And the girls like to watch me now, so making them is a fun process.  Lily says "Roll more Mommy!" ;o)

Homemade Tortillas

1 C whole wheat flour
1 C unbleached white flour
1 t salt
1/4 C butter
1/2 C room temperature water

Mix the flours and salt together in a large bowl.  Take a cheese grater and grate the butter over the bowl.  Using your hands, mix the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles crumbs.  (If you have a food processor or pastry blender, use those to totally nix the grating and hand mixing step.  I do not, so this is my old-fashioned way.)  Slowly add the water until it starts to come together.  Sometimes I need more water... but not too much!  Then turn it out on the counter and knead it until it's uniform.

Divide the dough into small balls.  I can usually get about 10 tortillas per batch.  Sometimes more.  Roll them as thin as possible (we're talking paper thin) on a floured surface.

Then heat up your skillet and get cooking!  I've found that overcooking is a bad, bad thing.  Katie says to wait till it's browning, but I find that whenever I've done that they're too crisp to roll properly.

So I usually do about ten seconds (or less) per side... till the bubbles form but not much longer.

Once you get the hang of it, you can roll while you cook... but it's easier to pay attention to the pan if you have the whole batch rolled already.  (Now that I've been doing it for awhile I'll get a few rolled out and then keep rolling more as I go.)

It only took me an hour to do a triple batch the other day, so with a single batch it would be less than a half an hour project.  Store them in the fridge till you need to use them.  Or freeze em.  And they roll better when slightly warmed in the microwave.

This week I made enchiladas one night and breakfast burritos another.  But I made a double batch of burritos because my sis-in-law gave me the brilliant idea to freeze them for Jesse for work.  Brilliant I tell you!

"Recipe" for these: I cooked up a bunch of veggies that were languishing in the fridge a whole bunch of healthy veggies specifically for this purpose... and some bacon, then about a dozen eggs.  Add the scramble mix on top of some cheese and then a spoonful of homemade salsa.  I'm obsessing over The Pioneer Woman's restaurant style salsa lately.

So now I have about twenty of these puppies in our freezer.  Just wrap them in foil and boom.  Breakfast on the go.  (We'll see how he likes them after work today... )

***Update: I now put them on plates in the freezer till they're frozen enough not to stick to each other, then I can put them in a bag and not have so much tin foil waste.  I guess you could also put them on a cookie sheet if you live in America and have a big freezer.  But my mini-German freezer requires multiple plates on the shelves!***

Both the tortillas and the burritos get rave reviews from my food critics (though some of them are still trying to figure out how to eat them rolled up).  Specifically, Jesse finally approves of the half white, half whole wheat mix.  When I used all whole wheat it's impossible for me to get them to roll without ripping.  So even though these aren't 100% whole wheat, I'm okay with that.  Five ingredients is better than 20 ;o)

And that's a wrap.  Ha.  Ha.