Tortilla Adventure Continued....

Ok, so I said I would share the recipes I used for tortilla's. Well the ones I used came from The Well Filled Tortilla, written by Victoria Wise and Susanna Hoffman.
In the flour tortilla recipe (page 29-30) they use 3 cups unbleached flour, 1/3 cup vegetable oil, 1 tsp salt and 1 cup warm tap water. All the ingredients are blended together and kneaded on a lightly floured surface until smooth and elastic, they say about 3-5 minutes. It took me about 3 minutes. The first batch I let sit in the fridge over night then let sit out for about a half an hour before I used the dough. I liked the texture of these better than my second batch. On my second batch I kneaded the dough and let sit at least 30 minutes as directed. The dough seemed to be more pliable when I let it rest over night in the firdge.

Now I know there are a gazillion tortilla recipes out there and many of them are very similar; you might even have your own. I just liked this one because it does not use lard or shortening and it is super quick and easy. Hand rolling them is also definitely the way to go. I would roll one out throw it in the pan and roll another while that one was cooking. It went really fast and in less than 30 minutes I had a dozen fresh tortilla's.

The hominy ones, also from The Well Filled Tortilla (page 31-32), turned out amazing. The tortilla press worked perfect on these. I just covered both sides of the press with plastic wrap and it made it easy to peel off each tortilla. The trick I learned, is to just put forth enough pressure to fully compact the press then lift right up. You don't want to push too hard, like I did the first few times, what happens is you get segments of tortilla's intead of a whole one. The extra pressure caused the dough to spread out too much causing it to break apart.

For this recipe Wise and Hoffman ask for 1 1/2 cups of canned hominy; pureed (they say most of a 29 ounce can), 1 1/2 cups Masa Harina, 1/4 tsp salt, and 1 cup hot tap water. Blend until it forms a soft ball, then shape into 18 equal sized balls a little bigger than a walnut, but smaller than a golf ball.
I did it a little different. I used all the same ingredients except I used one 15 ounce can of white hominy instead of the larger can (and instead of yellow hominy) and I used 1/2 tsp of kosher salt. They still turned out great. Nice and soft with just a little bit of chewiness.

If you have any adventures or tips of your own please feel free to share them. I could use all the help I can get :D
Happy tortilla making,
Rachel :D