Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Whole Wheat Tortillas

In Tokyo if I want to eat tacos, I can order something called taco rice that tastes like ground pork mixed with ketchup put on top of rice. Or I can get on a train and go to a fancy, upscale grocery store to buy way over priced Ole El Paso hard taco shells. Or I can walk 3 minutes to a normal grocery store, buy flour, and then make flour tortillas. Flour tortillas are actually quite simple to make, and when I went to the store today they had whole wheat flour so I decided to make whole wheat tortillas.

This is a small recipe, so if you are feeding more than 2 people or have a particularly large appetite you will want to double it.

Ingredients:
1 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
1/3 Cup Water
¼ tsp Baking Powder
¼ tsp Salt
1 TBSP Oil

What to Do:

Mix flour and water. Whole wheat does not absorb water as easily as white flour, so it’s good to let the flour and water sit for by themselves for a while. This will help prevent your tortillas from having a cardboard texture.


Stir in baking powder, oil, and salt. The dough should form a ball.

Knead for a minute or two. This is a small recipe so it doesn’t take the dough long to get nice and stretchy. It’s also really easy to do because there’s so much oil in there.

Let the dough rest at least 15 minutes.

Divide the dough up into balls. I made 6, which were a little on the small side.


This picture does a pretty good job showing just how tiny my apartment is. Usually I'm a little more careful about it with my pictures.

Anyways, roll out the dough into as circular of a shape as you can. It should be pretty thin, but thick enough to withstand anything you might be filling it with later. If the dough keeps retracting as you roll, that means you should let the dough rest a little longer and then try again.


Heat an ungreased frying pan to medium high. Then put in a tortilla. It only needs to cook about 30 seconds on each side.

Wrap the fresh tortillas in a towel to preserve their softness.

1 comment:

  1. Sometimes I still get those Ole El Paso shells because it reminds me of Mommel. Luckily, in Chicago we have tons of good tortillas available even at big chain grocery stores and they are cheap so I buy those. My one attempt at making my own tortillas was a semi-failure. I will have to try again via your instructions.

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