Last night I was attempting to make flour tortillas for the first time ever. Well, they tasted good, and mechanically they were a cinch to make, but they had the texture of old shoe leather.
It seems pretty simple, some flour, butter, salt and baking powder and away you go, right? Wrong. I made several mistakes that (I believe) contributed to the issue.
- Should not have been mixing the butter straight into the dry ingredients via the mixer. Upon re-reading several recipes they all say that the butter and flour must be mixed by hand without the water. The purpose of this will be to get bits of butter coated in flour and not the whole mess mashed up like you would want for a bread dough.
- Should have been using VERY hot water and only adding it after step one above. This should cause the butter to melt very nicely. I'm not sure what it would do to gluten formation in the dough, but that plus the 30 minute rest that all recipes call for should allow most of the toughness to weaken and relax.
- Butter vs. Lard vs. Shortening. I won't be using the shortening, but all I had on hand yesterday was the butter. Going to the store today and I'll grab some lard and see what sort of difference that makes.
I know that Nommy already has a few readers (hopefully there will be more coming in the weeks ahead!) but if anyone has any recommendations please let me know and/or post here. My quest is for nothing less than tender, tasty, and hot-off-the-griddle fresh tortillas. In other words, I want my own tortillilaria at home. Ole!
