Sourdough Flour Tortillas
This weeks bread falls into two categories, this weeks bread and uses for discard starter.
Lately I have felt that commercially made flour tortillas are almost tasteless. They worked to hold fillings but contributed nothing to taste and flavor.
I thought this would be straight forward after our learning experience making corn tortillas (see https://ourweeklybread.com/?s=Corn+tortillas). I was wrong. There is no gluten in masa dough. There is a lot of gluten in the flour tortilla dough and it fought us most of the way through. Our learning experience was much longer trying to make flour tortillas than the corn tortillas. At least the first 10 tortillas were less than satisfactory. From then on they slowly improved and the last dozen or so weren’t too bad.
The problem we were having was that the tortillas were shrinking back at least 1” in diameter after pressing and peeling them off the plastic. That also made them thicker. Initially we also had the griddle too hot and they were burning before they cooked through. Turning down the flame solved the second issue. It took much longer to solve the first issue.
The recipe I used as a guideline called for a 30 minute rest after mixing the dough and 5 minutes rest after forming balls of dough. I would say those are minimums. 30 minutes after forming dough balls would not be too much. This helped with the first issue, but didn’t solve it completely.
I then tried lightly oil the plastic I was using for pressing the tortillas. That didn’t help at all. I then tried flouring the dough balls before pressing and that helped some. Towards the end we found that tossing the dough balls in flour and shaking off the excess right after weighing and rolling work fine. But that still didn’t completely solve issue one.
Finally, I notice I could actually see the dough shrinking back while it was still in the tortilla press. After that I started letting shrink back and then pressing again until the dough didn’t shrink back. This usually took 4 pressings and happened in the minute and a half cook time of the previous tortilla. We got much more consistent tortillas after that but that may not be the total solution to issue one. Too much gluten development may be the real issue.
I may have made a mistake in mixing the dough. I intentionally let the dough knead in the mixer before I added the vegetable oil and salt, both of which are gluten inhibitors. I might have gotten a more relaxed dough from the beginning if I had just put everything in the mixing bowl at once. That is what I will do if we decide to make these again. I say if, because I’m not sure the work involved is worth the results. These tortillas do tasted better than any commercial flour tortilla I’ve had and taste good just eaten plain.
The way we were doing these was I was pressing the dough balls and passing the pressed tortilla still in the plastic to my wife Debbie who would get it out of the plastic and on to the cast iron griddle. The biggest issue was getting the tortilla from the plastic and on to the griddle without stretching it and distorting the shape as you can see in the photo below. It didn’t matter who tried to get them from the plastic, we both deformed them.
The Formula
| Ingredient | Amount | Bakers % |
| Starter Discard | 125 g | 20% |
| Water, warm tap | 320 g | 50% |
| Vegetable oil | 56 g | 8.8% |
| Baking powder | 2 g (1/2 t) | 0.3% |
| AP Flour | 637 g | 100% |
The following is the process I would follow if I were to make these again.
My Process
- Weigh out all ingredients.
- Add water and starter discard to the bowl of a standing mixer and mix until starter discard is incorporated into the water. Switch to dough hook.
- Add the oil and 2 cups of flour and mix on low speed. Add the baking powder and continue to mix. Continue adding flour 1/2 cup at a time letting each addition incorporate before making the next addition until a total of 4 cups have been added. Dough should be pulling away from the side of the bowl but not the bottom.
- Stop the mixer and check the dough. It should be soft but not sticky. If it is sticky, resume mixing on speed 2 and add 1 tablespoon of flour and and allow to incorporate before checking again. Repeat adding and incorporating until dough is no longer sticky but remains soft.
- Remove bowl from mixer and cover.
- Let dough rest a minimum of 30 minutes. 45 minutes to an hour is probably better.
- Weigh out 40* gram pieces of dough and roll into balls. Roll each dough ball in some of the left over flour. Place on work surface and cover with a damp linen towel to prevent drying.
- Let dough balls rest for at least 20 minutes, longer does not hurt.
- Use a rolling pin or tortilla press to form 7 to 8” diameter tortillas. If using tortilla press, press between sheets of plastic or parchment.
- Transfer to a hot griddle. Adjust heat so tortillas cook in 1 minute per side. It took us several tortillas to get the temperature of the griddle right. With our range and griddle we ended up at medium-low, but we were on a high output gas burner.
- Stack tortillas and keep cover to prevent drying. Makes about 30 tortillas.
-*- 40 grams made a 7-8” tortilla, 30 grams made a 5-6” tortilla.
I had hoped to make some 10” tortillas for wraps by using a rolling pin to roll them out. After all the issues we were having pressing them I quickly gave up on that idea.
At some point I probably try to make these again. The flavor is worth it, but I’m not sure the effort is.