Cooking With Whole Grains: Sourdough Tortillas

  I have tried to make my own flour tortillas many times with different recipes. They have always turned out too thick, stiff and bready. My mom even bought me a tortilla bakepress that I proceeded to break. Not very popular for that much work, so I dropped it and went back to my old habits. Until I decided to try once again after reading this and it worked!
  We have burritos (bu`rry-toes) every week: easy, quick, filling, cheap, less mess, etc. Now, it does take more time but I feel like its the right thing and (often more importantly) the flavor beats store-bought no comparison!  Abigail and I put together 4 recipes (took about 10 minutes) in the morning, let them set (grain soaking) all day until just before suppertime then we pumped out 48 tortillas in less than an hour.
  I really think that the trick is all the yummy fat that this recipe calls for. So if you have issues with fat...I plan on posting a lower fat recipe update. Not because I'm worried about the amount consumed its just sometimes I don't have enough!

 

  Sourdough Tortillas

1 recipe makes 12 tortillas

3/4 cup sourdough starter (this not necessarily leavening power as it is a flavor as well as an acid for grain soaking)

3 cups of flour (we made our  batches white and 1/2 whole wheat, this would be ideal for spelt and other flours I'm sure)
2 tsp salt
1 tsp. baking powder
1/3 cup of butter
1/3 cup of coconut oil (or lard if you like)
1/2 cup of hot water

Whisk together flour, salt, and baking powder.
Mix in sourdough starter.
Cut in the fats.
Stir in the hot water and form a dough ball.
Don't worry too much about making the dough tough by over mixing. Divide the dough into 12 round balls.
Cover and let rest 30 minutes or like me all day.

  Are you handy with a rolling pin? This is great practice. The texture of the dough is really forgiving and rolls out very smooth and thin. Practice will make these perfect one day! I ended up using white flour to roll with as it made less of an accumulation in the pan.

The key to a nice circle when using the rolling pin is to start out hand forming your lump of dough to the desired shape and slowly roll out. Quick comes later. Don't try to flatten it with 3 swipes, plan to roll many times, always from the center outwards.

See how we could use some more practice! The size is about 10'' to 12''. You could make your dough lumps smaller if your pan wont comfortably hold this size.

Cook about 1minute on either side. Toss the tortillas into a bowl with a lid on top. This keeps them soft and warm.
They roll up very well  with few blowouts!