Practice makes perfect, they say! So I practiced making tortillas and it was a small disaster… again!

In my last eco-friendly tips articles, I wrote about our recent plastic trash recent reduction and thought of the tortillas I eat for breakfast and the plastic they came in. I suddenly realized I should try again to make my own! Da!

The recipe I kind of followed

So I went straight to google and found a recipe for the Best Homemade flour Tortillas. That sounded good! I was there reminded that the ingredients for tortillas are so simple (and yes vegan!): flour, salt, baking powder, olive oil & water. Got all that, let’s do it!

Went straight to the kitchen and got everything out.

There, the thought popped in my head that this wasn’t my first attempt. No, not at all. I had tried to make tortillas before. Several times in fact. They had all turned out disastrous but I brushed it off. Not this time! This time, they are going to be great!!

The small recipe ‘improvement’ I made

Being incapable of following a recipe to the letter, once more, I decided to improvise a bit. Yes, this might explain a lot of the previous disastrous experience! But who’s judging?

So I replaced 2/3 of the regular flour by wholegrain flour, and part of the remaining flour by corn flour, leaving only a small portion of the total flour content, to be by regular flour. What could go wrong!

In fact it started well! Dough was pretty and felt right in consistency.

I left it there and came back 15 minutes later as instructed but then read the recipe again and noticed I was supposed to have divided it, in tortilla portions. OK, well not too late to do so. Just let it rest a bit longer!

No problem!

Meanwhile, I had to handle some work emails and don’t really know how long it took.

All is still ok!

The cooking

Came back in the kitchen, rolled the first bit of dough… Well the recipe say to roll into a rough circle, obviously. Yeah, mine looked more like a rough square!

No, no… no problem, the first one is always messy!

I thought the pan was hot by now, but I’m guessing it wasn’t.

Admire the result for yourself. I couldn’t stop laughing, slightly nervously! You can do this, I kept thinking. First crepe is always messy and so the first tortilla shall be, I repeated.

Had plenty of time to roll the second dough piece, while the first one was becoming a disaster. Second roll was slightly better!! Less of a square. Oh my… It’s so thin! By the time I picked it up and put it into the pan, it totally had a different shape!

Still eatable, right!?!

And it went on and on.

No, still not round…

Pfff, 6 more to go… It’s getting hot here. I should have cut the ingredients by half.

Ok and done… Now let’s make enchiladas!

Making tortillas in summer… not necessarily the best idea!

I only had 11 tortillas to make. 10 that could be called tortillas at the end. It still got really hot, really fast!

There is a reason why French only do crèpes in Winter! Why la Chandeleur is in February! There is common wisdom there.

Making tortillas on a hot summer day was not a brilliant idea and making enchiladas after that, was even worst! But here we are, what is done is done!

Yes, it was delicious!

The other disaster was the state of the kitchen!

I’ve ‘complained’ or simply acknowledged (?!) before that when my partner cooks, it takes me longer to clean than him to do the cooking!

Now I should admit that while making these tortillas, I also made quite a mess! There was flour everywhere, including on my t-shirt, my trousers, the door knobs, the floor… bits of dough sticked under my nails and went on to stick to everything I touched, which seems like way too many things… I smelled like grease too.

Was it worth it?

I would say that the tortillas, despite being not fantastic looking and thicker than the store bought ones, were really good. Nevertheless, I don’t think I can run this experiment every week, just to practice and make them perfectly!

So here you have it. Now, if you didn’t really understand before, you clearly know why I can’t be a food blogger!