2008-04-07 - 2:19 p.m.
Is it just me, or is making bread-stuff way more satisfying than ordinary cooking and baking?
Tortilla time!
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2 cups flour (Footnote 1)
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. oil
3/4 cup warm milk
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- Mix the flour and the baking powder together and mix the salt and the oil with the milk. Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture a little bit at a time. Knead the dough ball until it's nice and smooth. (Footnote 2)
- Let the dough ball rest for 15 minutes or so. Then divide the dough ball up into 6 or 8 little dough balls (to make big or medium-sized tortillas) and let those rest for another 15 or 20 minutes. (Footnote 3)
- Roll out each dough ball until it looks like a tortilla (Footnote 4) and then cook them, one at a time and on both sides, in frying pan. (Footnote 5)
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Footnote 1 - Supposedly flour with less gluten is better for making tortillas than flour with more gluten. I wouldn't know because the only flour I buy is whatever flour is cheapest at the store at the time.
Footnote 2 - The recipe said to knead the dough ball and later to roll it out without using any extra flour. Frankly, I don't see how this could be possible. The dough ball is sticky, and there's no way to manipulate that thing without flouring whatever surfaces you're working on. Thus, I've ammended the original recipe to use-as-little-extra-flour-as-possible, and that's been working just fine.
Footnote 3 - This isn't a yeast recipe, so I don't really understand what the resting is all about. The dough's texture does seem to change slightly between rests though, so maybe something actually is happening during that time...
Footnote 4 - The dough pulls back while your rolling it, which makes it hard to create perfectly round tortillas. Whatever. Ovals taste good too.
Footnote 5 - I forget this everytime! When huge air bubbles start to grow as you're cooking the tortillas, pop them with some kind of utensil, and not with your fingers! The air inside them is, not at all surprisingly, really hot!
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Tortilla (Chip) Time! PART II
- Put a little oil and salt on top of each tortilla and cut it up like a pie.
- Bake the chips on a cookie tray at 375F (190C) for maybe five or seven minutes. Be warned that the chips will go from still soft to perfectly done to burnt in a fairly short time frame and that you might want to stay kind of near the oven while those chips are baking.
