Well it appears that my first official post is going to be all about tortillas! I love the little flour based devils. My husband and I eat them whenever we get the chance and the pups love them too! But the other day I opted to try something a little new. I have a recipe that I like a lot from Homesick Texan, but as usual I am totally unsatisfied with a recipe unless I have played with it and made it my own. That’s one of the best things about cooking/baking isn’t it!
Tortilla’s are so good and versatile. We cook ours on our cast iron round griddle which works great (aside from the fact that you can only cook one at a time). I love the way that you can mix a few ingredients together and although while it is dough it tastes quite bad, once it has cooked it is quite amazing!
For this recipe I decided to experiment with King Arthur’s White Whole Wheat Flour. I haven’t used it up until this point and decided that this would be a good test. I love my whole wheat flour but also like to experiment. The protein content is a little over 1% less in the KA While Whole Wheat than their traditional Whole Wheat but a little over 1% higher than their All Purpose. From what I have read the White Whole Wheat is often substituted for KA All Purpose Flour which intrigued me. Because it is wheat flour I still let it rest longer than I would All Purpose to make sure the sugars were getting released and giving me a wonderfully flavored tortilla.
I made a double recipe and that is what I am sharing because the regular recipe only yields 8 good sized tortillas and the just isn’t enough for a true tortilla lover!
White Whole Wheat Flour Tortillas
4 cups KA White Whole Wheat Flour
1 1/2 cups warmed plain soy milk (have an extra 1/4 cup close because you may need it)
1 Tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons salt (I use finely ground sea salt)
4 teaspoons oil (I use canola oil)
Mix everything together making sure that the flour is thoroughly saturated. I end up with a big fat blob of off white dough which was set in the oven with some hot water to act as a proofing box. I left it in there and took the pups for a walk (~1 hour). After the walk I cut the dough into 16 equal pieces and formed them into little balls and allowed them to sit another 20 – 30 minutes with a damp cloth over the top of them. This time I didn’t put them in the over but just left them on the counter.
Each ball was then rolled out as flat as possible (~1/8 – 1/4 inch). I use KA all purpose for this because I am going to be putting it directly on the griddle and I don’t want to loose any flavor by adding whole wheat that hasn’t had a chance to saturate and break down a little bit. I am always concerned with flavor when it comes to not giving the whole wheat flour enough time to “mature.” While I am rolling out the first tortilla I preheat my griddle (medium-high heat).
It is helpful to have a second person helping you while you do the rolling and putting on the griddle. Once you put them on the griddle they have to be watched closely because as soon as they start to bubble up you need to flip them or pull them off the griddle. It’s not impossible to do both but it is definitely easier to have a helper. Remember, once you start seeing bubbles, flip or pull off depending on what side you are on. Gauge it by the amount of brown you like on your own tortilla, I like mine to have small spots of light brown on them more for visual appeal then functionality.
Now it’s time to figure out what you want to eat in them and ENJOY!
We had vegetarian burritos (our meat substitute was Gimme Lean ground beef substitute)! It was tasty!!
