Saturday, July 30, 2011

Flour tortillas

Yesterday was my big cooking day. For some reason I got into into my head that I wanted to make tortillas. I remember making them in elementary school so it couldn't be too hard right? Correct! I used this super helpful recipe, and they came out great. They take a little time but they are easy peasy and really fun to make. Plus they're delicious and way better than anything that comes in a plastic bag. They're thicker than average tortillas, which I like, something like a tortilla/pita hybrid.


All you need is:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
3/4 cup lukewarm milk (2% is fine)

These are things that we always have so I can just throw them together whenever. Love that because I am the queen of not having all my ingredients. Mix the dry and wet ingredients separately first and then mix them together.


After you've got some dough, knead it for a couple minutes. My dough was super sticky so I had to add quite a bit of flour to my board to make it managable. Then you cover it with a damp towel and let it sit for 15 minutes.


Then separate them into 8 balls of future tortilla-ness and let them hang out under the towel for another 20 minutes.




Then comes the fun! Roll those babies out, one at a time. It helps if you flour your rolling pin and board after each tortilla, the dough is still pretty sticky. I made mine as thin as I could, they kinda reached a certain point where they wouldn't stretch anymore. Don't worry they're magical and thicken up like crazy when you cook them. And perfect circles are for squares (you like that shape pun?). Wonky is the way to go.




Then throw that baby on a dry griddle or whatever flat heating device you have. I had mine on medium high. And they cook fast! The recipe says to cook it for 30 seconds on each side but I just eyeballed it. When they reached the above pictured point of bubbliness, I flipped them. The bubbly part is the coolest, it looks like a swamp.

 

The other side cooks super fast so watch it closely. Because those raised bubbles are touching the pan first they'll get burned if you don't watch them. Maybe 20 seconds or so, you kinda get a feel for it as you go. I'm sure this all also depends on what you're cooking them on and how hot.


And viola! You've got some fantastic tortillas. We had ours last night with chicken fajitas and it was aaaaamazing. Favorite meal in a long time and I don't even like chicken. I made them ahead of time and reheated them in the oven like the recipe suggests. I don't think we'll ever buy tortillas again, these are far too yummy. Now I just need to learn how to make regular bread and we'll be in business.

And thus completes what I think is my first official food blog post! Many more to come I'm sure, as cooking is slowly taking over my life. I even have battle scars, I burned my arm yesterday and am now sporting a super cute red thumbprint sized mark on my forearm. 

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