Flour Tortillas That Don't Suck
And a note on finding alone time when you live in a tiny apartment
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When two people live in a small one-bedroom apartment, there isn’t much space to be alone. If you need it, you have to get creative.
For me, that means finding a pair of headphones and getting deep into another world. Often of the TV variety.
However much I wish I could live without TV, I can’t. I feel gulty about that and I call that guilt what it is — the Puritan work ethic in its modern guise: productivity.
I know I could be doing something productive and the world makes me feel like I should. Instead I’m re-watching Gilmore Girls for the fifth time.
But hey. That’s who I am.
Seeing as I spend a good portion of my week cooking, I figured this is the best time to get in that alone time on the TV. Headphones in, phone perched perilously somewhere in the kitchen, me mucking about with recipes.
A little world of my own for a few hours.
Making these flour tortillas is a perfect excuse for some Charlie-alone-time-whilst-husband-is-in-the-same-room. I cook a batch every 10 days or so whilst getting in a good few episodes of *insert brain-rotting TV show here.*
I make so many because I’m quietly obsessed with stovetop-baked eggs which I eat for lunch more days during the week than I care to mention. When you top the eggs onto a warm flour tortilla, all feels well in the world.
You could ask why make flour tortillas when they’re so readily available in supermarkets. Part of the reason was to make an effort to eliminate highly processed food in my diet. Bread is especially vulnerable to processing — you only need to look at a slice of wonderbread compared to a slice of homemade — so it was an obvious place to start.
But it’s more than that. Making 12 of these wraps takes around an hour and that’s an hour for me. On my own. In my own little TV world. Call it alone time, productivity, and health rolled into one.
Hey, maybe I’m more productive than I thought.
Mexican flour tortillas are often made with lard but I make mine with butter. Mainly because lard is harder to source (and butter keeps them vegetarian). I’ve experimented with oil but I find butter keeps the tortillas much softer once they’re cooked.
Use hand-hot water, never cold. The heat aids in making a more pliable dough and melts the butter which results in more even distribution.
Traditionally, flour tortillas are made on a comal which is a Mexican griddle. If you make a lot of Mexican food, they can be a great investment but for the rest of us, a large, flat-bottomed frying pan does nicely.
The key to getting this recipe right lies in two things. 1) resting the dough which helps it to relax and makes it easier to handle and 2) rolling out each tortillas as thin as you can. Be sure to do both.
These tortillas freeze and defrost brilliantly. Separate each one using a piece of baking paper so they don’t stick together in the freezer. Defrost in an oven (wrap in aluminium foil before they go in, they should take around five minutes), in a warm (but not hot) frying pan or in a pinch, a microwave.
Makes 12 tortillas
260g plain white flour
65g cold butter (approximately 5 tablespoons)
150ml water with 1 tsp dissolved salt
Tip the flour into a mixing bowl.
Rub the butter into the flour using your fingertips until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Add the hot water and salt and mix until it forms a ball. If it’s too wet to ball up, add more flour - tablespoon by tablespoon - until you can grab it out of the bowl.
Knead for a minute or two until soft, pliable and smooth.
Put the dough back into the bowl, cover with a tea towel and let it rest for 30 minutes.
Heat a dry frying pan on a medium-high heat.
Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces.
Take each piece and roll it into a thin disc — as thin as you can until it’s almost translucent — using a rolling pin. Use plenty of flour if the dough is sticky.
When the frying pan is hot, stick in a tortilla. Check the underside after a minute or two, you should see golden spots forming. Flip and cook on the other side until lightly golden.
Place the tortilla in a clean tea towel and cover whilst you make the rest. Keep an eye on the heat of your pan, turning it down if they are starting to burn or cook too quickly.
This being baking, there isn’t much room for variations in this recipe itself, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use these tortillas in hundreds of ways:
Make pork carnitas and stuff it into these tortillas until you are stuffed:
The same goes for chilli con carne and white chilli:
Or serve with any of the aforementioned stovetop baked eggs recipes:
Other serving ideas include:
Smear on homemade labneh and top with roasted vegetables like spiced cauliflower or fennel roased carrots.
Slice into 8 triangles, drizzle with oil and bake in the oven until crispy. Use for dips like hummous, baba ghanoush or muhummara.
Smear on hummous and top with griddled or broiled aubergine.
Or my favourite can’t-be-arsed-snack —cheddar cheese and hot sauce melted onto a wrap in the microwave. Disgusting, yes. Delicious, always.
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Do you have any tricks for transferring the thin tortilla to the pan without it tearing, folding ordeformity? deforming? The struggle often deters me.