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Monday, February 20, 2012

(MIS)adventures in tortilla making: The near death of a camera


Saw this recipe from a commenter named Vicky at Money Saving Mom's post about making your own flour tortillas.
My Tortilla Recipe (makes 8-12 depending on size)
3 cups flour
1 cup water
1/4 cup oil (butter, lard, coconut oil etc)
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Mix everything but flour in a mixing bowl. Once that is stirred up add the flour and combine. Knead for a min or two to get dough to come together. Seperate into balls and then cover and let rest for 10-15 min.
Well, hey, that's easy enough, right?
I had the ingredients and decided to give it a whirl. On a Saturday with the oldest in and out of the house on his skateboard, the youngest standing at my feet, and a husband still recouping from outpatient surgery.  GREAT IDEA, SELF.
Mix the stuff together.

Roll into balls.  See my balls of dough?  
Okay now flatten them out.  People who are actually successful at this use a rolling pin or a tortilla press.  I, being a lazy and cheap cook, have neither.  I used my hands to smash the balls down.  They are not circular at all.
First one goes in the pan.
More go in the pan.
It was during ^THAT^ photo that I dropped my camera into the hot skillet.  
Let that sink in for a minute.  Super hot skillet, tortillas cooking, camera lands right on one.  About a dozen thoughts ran through my head within 2 seconds: "OHMYGOSH!"  "What just happened"  "Is my camera in the frying pan?"  "Will the batteries explode?"  "The plastic is going to melt and ruin my tortilla."  "How do I fix this, Mom never taught me what to do when your camera falls into the food."  "We're all going to DIE."
I just used my bare hand and plucked the camera out.  It was fine!  phew!
I recover and keep cooking.
They aren't exactly round...just try rolling this one into a burrito:
Finally all of the oddly shaped tortillas are done.

The verdict was:
store bought are way easier and what we'll use for burritos/tacos
homemade tastes completely different and we think, better.

Clean up time.  Who wants to come wash my dishes?

Sharing the adventure at these linky parties: Linda's Lunacy, Hope Studios, Mess Hall to Bistro 

4 comments:

  1. From one lazy and cheap cook to another: thank you for saving my time! I will buy the $1 package of tortillas happily rather than try it myself (plus I'm too cheap to buy another camera if I happen to drop mine in!--ahhh, the joys of blogging...)

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  2. I make my own tortillas using a very similar recipe. They probably aren't as good as store bought ones, but we don't eat them that often. I do have a rolling pin and mine still come out very NOT round.

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  3. I know I'm late, but I just had a baking disaster today and thought of you.

    I'm trying to plan activities with my daughter every Friday since I realize she will be in Kindergarten soon and I won't have as much time with her.

    One of these activities was Bread Dough Animals, which I planned for today. Note, I don't often bake bread. But we have this recipe in a Sesame Street food craft book that looked straightforward.

    The problem? I couldn't find the Sesame Street book today. So I set out to find a similar recipe online. I found one at hgtv.com. The problem? This recipe listed the flower not in cups, but pounds and ounces! I may be a name nerd, but I'm not a baking nerd.

    No problem, I thought. We have a baby scale. I put a bowl on a baby scale, zero'd out the bowl's weight and started to fill with flower. I needed 1 lb., 2 oz. I noted the weight read 1.2 lbs. Then I wondered, is .2 lbs the same as 2 oz? I don't think it it. But I decided to go with it anyway.

    There was So. Much. Flower. It looked like 8 cups! I tried to mix the rest of the ingredients together. It was so crumbly. It wasn't coming together. I decided to try to kneed it anyway. It was a crumbly mess and I almost threw it out. Then I got the idea to put it in my Kitchen Aid mixer. It still wasn't coming together. Finally I added more water - about double what the recipe called for.

    Now the dough came together, but there was so. Much. Dough. At the moment it is sitting in a bowl rising for an hour. I can only imagine how much dough I'm going to have when it's done rising.

    Even if the taste and texture are bad, I'm hoping my daughter still has fun shaping the dough into animals. We'll see how it goes.

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  4. I don't if i'll laugh or not, anyway that's a great tortilla expedition of yours. If you want to use your tortilla and make some breakfast burritos. You can see it here http://www.gourmandia.com/back-to-school/breakfast.php

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