Whole Wheat Tortillas - Super easy!

My family loves tortillas!  We eat them as wraps and frequently replace bread with them.  I used to buy them at the store every week and kept them around as one of our fave staple items.  Then I read the labels....  again I was disappointed in the commercial food industry and the ingredients they use in our food.  There were so many ingredients that I did not recognize, making me suspicious that there was "chemical soup" in those tortillas, including preservatives to give them a longer shelf life.
Many were made with corn of course, and now I am aware that most commercial corn has been modified genetically without any information as to how that will affect us in the years to come.

I had a nurse friend once upon a time that stayed at my house overnight every other weekend so she could work the weekend package 12 hour shifts at the local hospital.  She lived a long way away and did not want to commute every day.  It was nice to have her and one night many years ago she made us homemade tortillas.  She told me how easy it was and she certainly made it look easy.  Her husband was from Mexico and her mother-in-law had schooled her in the art.  I remember her tortillas being delicious and tasting fresh.  This prompted me to find a way to do the same for my family now.

We tried a few different recipes.  The ones I made with cornflour were awful (I suspect I purchased the wrong type but I was determined to use NON-GMO or nothing) so we scrapped that recipe.  I have always preferred a soft flour tortilla so I decided that perhaps a whole wheat tortilla would be ok.  The simplest recipe was found on line .. surprise!  It was fairly low sodium and had only 4 ingredients.  The fat that was called for was olive oil, so I thought this may be the perfect fit for my family.  IT WAS!  Every week I make a batch of these easy tortillas for my family to eat and they keep nicely in the refrigerator.  I will share the recipe and instructions with you so you can make some at your house tonight!

Just a warning:  The first time I made these they were fairly irregular and a bit ugly.. my family laughed at my tortilla experiment right up until they tasted them.  Love to fool them! 

Ingredients:
2 cups of flour (I use whole wheat)
1/2 teaspoon of salt
3/4 cup of water
3 Tablespoons of olive oil

Directions:
In a large bowl, combine flour and salt.  (I also add some flax meal to this mix - about 2 Tablespoons to facilitate more Omegas in our diet)  Stir in water and olive oil.  Turn onto a floured surface; knead 10 -12 times, adding a little flour or water if needed to achieve a smooth dough.  Let rest for 10 minutes.

Divide dough into 8 portions.  On a lightly floured surface, roll each portion into a 7 inch circle.

In this pic I am trying to show how easy it is to take the rolled tortilla off of the rolling mat if you use a flexible cutting board to roll it on.  It just peels off...  hold it carefully in your hand to get it into the pan flat.

In a large non stick skillet coated with cooking spray, cook tortillas over medium heat for 1 minute on each side or until lightly browned.  Serve warm or refrigerate until later.

Each tortilla = 159 calories.

 

8 yummy tortillas for dinner-fresh, no junk in them!

FYIs...  some advice to help you succeed...

• If you want to soak your flour first to add nutrition and decrease the amount of phytic acids in the finished product, you can mix the 3/4 cup water and 2 cups flour the night before and let it sit and soak for up to 24 hours or so until you are ready to add the other 2 ingredients.  I also added about 1/4 cup milk to help facilitate the soaking.
• When I am kneading my dough, I notice that the olive oil make is slick so I have never added more flour when rolling or after initial mixing of the dough.
• When rolling these out, flatten the little round blob of dough on a flexible cutting mat.. (wax paper would probably work too).  Make it flat as you can with your hand and then use the rolling pin to take it from the center to the outer edges on each side a few times, stretching and flattening the circle.
• Once it is rolled out into a circle, I pick up the entire cutting board or waxed paper and tip it over into my other hand, loosen an edge and then carefully peel the tortilla off of the surface, carefully keeping it from folding on itself as it is placed in the pan.
• The recipe calls for using cooking spray in the pan but the olive oil in the mix makes it not stick and it is easy to turn so I just use a hot pan.  I actually just turn it by hand/with my fingers.