Tortillas

Lately I've had a hankering for homemade tortillas.

When I was 11, my best friend's mom Francis made tortillas all the time. Debbie & I would take a hot tortilla off the griddle and rub a stick of margarine all over it, roll it up, and munch away as melted hydrogenated fat ran down our chins.

The tortillas were thick, irregularly dappled with brown spots, and not entirely round. And, they were wonderfully moist & chewy.

So, of course it galls me to pay upwards of $3/dozen at the grocery store for tortillas that are perfectly round, completely white, paper thin, brittle, dry, and tasteless. I look at these things and think, "$3 for 12 little pieces of flour and fat?!"

No doubt it was my hankering for real tortillas that made me decide to create soy tortillas for my knitting group today. (The theme was "foods that cause or cure hot flashes.")

So, I bought a tortilla press, googled up a tortilla recipe, and figured I'd substitute soy flour for half the unbleached white flour.

The tortilla press did not come with instructions. And, I don't think my friend's mom ever used one. But eventually I figured out how to operate it.

The first tortilla came out dry, brittle, and tasting like an unsweetened soy pancake.

Much kneeding later, the next few tortillas came out like soy-flavored naan.

I started double-pressing the tortillas, and then stretching them like pizza dough. The tortillas gradually got better.

The final ones were a lot more irregular in circumference and dappling than the tortillas of my childhood, but they were reasonably moist and were finally starting to get the right level of chewiness.

And, they tasted like.... soy.

Nevertheless, I'm kinda proud of the fact that they came out looking and feeling almost like tortillas. If I would have just stuck with plain all-purpose flour, they might have even tasted like tortillas, too.

But, next time I have a hankering for tortillas, I think I'll go to the store and uncomplainingly fork over $3 for a dozen perfectly round, perfectly white, and perfectly tasteless pieces of flour and fat.