Gluten Free Flour Tortillas
This recipe is an adaptation of my Wife’s Great-Grandmother’s flour tortilla recipe. This is a great first step if you are new to using gluten free flour as this recipe is super simple, and it will teach you some of the fundamentals of using gluten free flour. I have used Better Batter gluten free flour blend to make these with great results, I have also used my own general purpose gluten free flour blend with identical success. This recipe calls for 2 Cups or 326 grams of flour blend, but you will need extra for rolling. Always roll a flour tortilla, tortilla presses are strictly for corn tortillas. A bench scraper is a great tool to have for this one, it can help lift stuck tortillas from your rolling surface. This batch will yield about 8 7-inch tortillas.
Working Around your Allergies
Typically these would be made with traditional wheat flour. We’ve taken care of that already. The only other considerations for food restrictions are to use vegetable shortening instead of lard. I only mention that because I have made this for other people before. Their initial reaction was “Wow these are delicious!” Then they hear there is lard in the tortillas and their demeanor changes to “Oh… I think lard is yucky”. Remember to make each recipe your own!
Ingredients:
98 g White Rice Flour
98 g Brown Rice Flour
49 g Corn Starch
49 g Tapioca Starch
23 g Amaranth Flour
10 g Xanthan Gum
-or-
2 Cups All-purpose Gluten Free Flour
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 ½ Teaspoons Baking Powder
2 Tablespoons Lard
1 Cup Boiling Water
Instructions:
Sift all dry ingredients into the bowl of your stand mixer. Next add the lard and turn your stand mixer on. Allow the lard to break up into the flour. Add the boiling water next, the dough should begin to form. When finished, the dough should be warm, thick, pliable, and slightly sticky. Once the dough is combined, cover the bowl with a towel to trap in the warmth and moisture. Divide the dough into 8 pieces or break off 60 gram pieces of dough, massaging each ball in your hand to ensure smoothness and workability of the dough. Put the individual pieces back into the bowl and keep covered, as they can dry out too much during the rolling process. Press one piece between your hands to make a disc, then place the disc on a lightly floured surface. Roll with a rolling pin until flat and roughly 6-7 inches in diameter. Once rolled you can cook the tortillas on a cast iron comal or a skillet without oil. They will cook relatively quickly, changing color and forming small or large air pockets while cooking. This is a sign you have made a good tortilla.
Sift in dry ingredients.
Add lard, then mix. Add boiling water and mix some more.
Measure out 60g balls, keep covered, roll one at a time on a lightly floured surface.
Tips:
- The dough will change from the almost translucent raw color to opaque white then darker crispy zones will form based on where air pockets formed. I personally like my tortillas for tacos a little bit crispy, but sometimes a softer and more flexible tortilla is required. If you are going for something such as burritos, you will want a larger lightly cooked tortilla that will be flexible and large enough to stuff and roll. The only limit on size is how large of a pan you have to cook them, large tortillas are also significantly harder to roll out evenly. The good news is you have several tortillas per batch to experiment with.
- No air pockets? No problem. Sometimes they just don’t inflate. They are still tasty and perfectly functional.
- The water must be boiling or nearly boiling, and the bowl with the dough balls must stay covered. Steam heat keeps the dough warm and damp enough to roll. If your dough gets too dry it won’t roll out thin enough.
- These store well in the refrigerator raw. I like to make a double batch, cook what I need for that meal, then place the remaining raw ones in a stack and bag them in a zipper bag. Be sure to let the raw tortillas cool and squeeze out any extra air, once bagged and in the refrigerator moisture becomes the enemy.
- Do you like Chimichangas, Flautas, and Chalupas? Good news friend, these fry exceptionally well.