How to make Tortillas

This is the third post in a series focusing on how to save money by making foods that you would normally buy already made. Not only is it cost-effective to make a lot of your own food, it’s just so much more satisfying and rewarding.

With Mexican being one of my husband’s favorite foods to eat, we nearly always have tortillas or tortilla chips in the house. We’ve kept saying that we should try to make tortillas instead of buying them since it would probably save us money, but we never have done it. With my recent foray into trying to make more things from scratch, however (like pita bread, for example), I decided to just go ahead and do it. I tried a couple of recipes, but while the first was decent, I found it to be too dry. The second recipe I found is a keeper, though, and I’ve already made two or three batches of tortillas using this recipe. It’s now been weeks since we’ve purchased tortillas at the store.

A lot of times when I am trying to find a good recipe, I often look for videos that walk you through the process. I found the following video, which I found to be interesting because instead of using shortening or oil, they use walnuts to make their tortillas. I decided to try it and we really like this recipe.

Whole Wheat Tortillas
This recipe makes about 16 8- to 10-inch tortillas

• 2 cups hot water
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 cup walnuts I think you could probably also use pecans
• 1 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups white flour
• 2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

Blend together the hot water, rolled oats, walnuts and salt for a couple of minutes. If you have a high power blender you can probably get away with less time, but lower powered blenders probably need a full two or three minutes.

While your liquid mixture is blending, stir together the white and whole wheat flours in a large mixing bowl.

Pour your liquid mixture into the flour and mix.

I like to stir it by hand first…

…then use an electric mixer to knead.

Once the tortilla dough is done mixing it will be soft.

Cover the mixing bowl with a damp towel or with plastic wrap, and let the dough rest for about thirty minutes.

After the dough has finished resting, flour a clean surface and take a piece of dough about the size of a ping pong ball or golf ball and roll it out to your desired thickness.

You may find that it’s challenging to make it perfectly round, but with practice you’ll find that it gets easier. You could also use a tortilla press, but it’s not necessary.

Heat a large skillet or pancake griddle over high heat. Place a tortilla on the skillet. Watch it closely, and once you see small bubbles forming turn it over.

It should continue to form larger bubbles.

Wait about 15 to 20 seconds, then turn it over again and let it go for about 10 seconds.

Repeat the process until all tortillas have been made.

These tortillas have a really nice flavor, and you can’t taste the walnuts at all. They can be used for burritos and wraps, or torn up and used for dipping.

They also are pretty cheap to make. Let’s look at the cost difference.

Looking up a random grocery store’s prices on the internet, we can see that a package of whole wheat tortillas (a count of six tortillas) costs $2.89, while a package of eight 8-inch white flour tortillas costs $3.19.

When looking at our ingredients list, the most expensive is the walnuts which is $6.03/pound. There are four cups of walnuts in a one pound bag. Next, the rolled oats comes in at $5.29/42-ounce canister. In this size, there are 15 cups of oats. The whole wheat flour is $3.19/5-pound bag, and the white flour is $3.69/5-pound bag. A 5-pound bag of flour contains 20 cups.

Cost for Whole Wheat Flour	Cost for White Flour	Cost for Walnuts	Cost for Rolled Oats	Tortilla Cost
2 1/2 cups = $0.40	2 cups = $0.37	1/2 cup = $0.75	1 cup = $0.35	$1.87/16 tortillas or $0.96/8 tortillas or $0.72/6 tortillas or $0.12/tortilla
Store-bought package of Whole Wheat Tortillas (6 count)				$2.89/package or $0.48/tortilla
Store-bought package of White Flour Tortillas (8 count)				$3.19/package or $0.40/tortilla

Based upon the above we can see that it costs us 300% more per tortilla if we were to buy the whole wheat version at the store or 233% more per tortilla if we were to buy the white flour version. That’s just crazy how much you can save by making your own! Sure, it can be a little time consuming, and a bit of a workout if you roll each out by hand, but believe me, it’s completely worth it. They taste great, and they keep well in the fridge for about a week, if you’ll let them last that long. :)

Do you have a favorite tortilla recipe?

Related posts:

• How to make Pita Bread

Tagged as: rolled oats, salt, walnuts, white flour, whole wheat flour