Now that we have been using freshly milled flour for a year now, we have almost eliminated all store-bought bread. One item we were still buying at the store was tortillas. I would buy the white tortillas because I just didn't like the taste of the whole wheat ones as well. I decided to try making tortillas to see if we could make the switch to homemade. The first thing I learned was that you really do need a tortilla press. I tried rolling them out and it was too difficult to get them thin enough. I got a small 6 inch press since I wasn't sure if I would really use it that much. The bigger presses were a lot more expensive. The results were very impressive. The taste is so much better than anything store bought. Freshness really does matter!
Some tips:
1. You need to use freshly milled flour - we tried a comparison with white flour and the white tortillas actually shrunk immediately after pressing so they were really small and thick. I haven't tried whole wheat flour from the store.
2. Use saran wrap to cover the press so the dough doesn't stick to the press. You can just peel the plastic off the tortilla. You can use the same plastic over and over for your batch.
3. They are best eaten immediately. We do make enough for leftovers for an extra meal but they aren't as good. Re-grilling them does help somewhat.
4. Allow about an hour for prep time. You can chop up tomatoes, etc. while the dough rests.
5. Enlist the help of your kids or another family member. They can press while you throw them on the grill.
6. I use a countertop pancake griddle so I can grill them almost as fast as my daughter can press them. It takes about 3 minutes on each side.
Tortilla pressing is so easy! If my 5 year old can do it, so can you! Laura pressed all 20 tortillas one night for dinner and loved being a helper in the kitchen.
2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast, or 1 packet active dry yeast
1 1/3 cups lukewarm water (use less if using fresh milk)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup honey, molasses, or maple syrup (I use honey)
3 ¾ cup freshly milled flour (I use hard white wheat)
1/4 cup nonfat dried milk OR use fresh milk and reduce water by ¼ cup
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
Optional: 2 T ground flaxseed (add toward the end of the kneading process)
Directions:
Yield: 1 loaf, 16 slices.
Prep: Stir yeast into lukewarm water. Set aside. Mill flour or get flour out of freezer to bring to room temp. Spray bread pan with Pam (do this now – before your hands get messy!). Have ½ cup flour handy so you can add to your dough as needed when kneading.
Mixing: In a large bowl, combine all of the ingredients including yeast and water and stir till the dough starts to leave the sides of the bowl. Let it sit about 20-30 minutes. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface, oil your hands, and knead it for 6 to 8 minutes, or until it begins to become smooth and supple. (You may also knead this dough in an electric mixer or food processor, or in a bread machine programmed for "dough" or "manual.") Add flour if dough is too sticky. Dough will still be somewhat sticky when you are done (your hands will be a mess – that is normal). Transfer the dough to your greased pan and allow to rise until rounded in pan (about 1 inch above the top of the pan), about 60 minutes, depending on the warmth of your kitchen. Be careful not to let the dough fall if you need to move it or when putting it in the oven.A finger pressed into the dough should leave a mark that rebounds slowly.
Baking: Bake the bread in a preheated 350°F oven for 37 minutes, tenting it lightly with aluminum foil after 20 minutes. Test it for doneness by removing it from the pan and thumping it on the bottom (it should sound hollow), or measuring its interior temperature with an instant-read thermometer (it should register 190°F at the center of the loaf). Remove the bread from the oven, and cool it on a wire rack before slicing. Store the bread in a plastic bag at room temperature.
If you use 3 mini loaf pans instead of one standard loaf pan, baking time is 25 minutes.
Notes on using freshly milled flour:
The fresher the better – milled within 24 hours gives the freshest taste. If you aren't using the flour immediately, store in the freezer.
Fresh flour is not as settled as store bought flour so you need more if measuring by the cup – this recipe has been adjusted.
If you get a good rise with this recipe, it may be a little too much for a standard loaf pan. You can put a small amount in a mini loaf pan if you need to.
Recipe adapted by Leslie Beck from King Arthur Flour.
Today we made graham crackers. Laura, my 4 year-old, helped mix them up and then we rolled the dough into a jelly roll pan to bake. I don't eat graham crackers but Laura really likes them so I thought this would be a better alternative. Ironically, she didn't care for them. She said she likes the ones from the factory better. My son, Sam, really liked them and was very excited at the prospect of getting them in his lunch. He said they were much better than the ones from the factory (his words, not mine).
The recipe I used was from the breadbeckers.com site. I love this website. They have a lot of great information about freshly milled flour. I altered the recipe by using brown sugar instead of sucanat (since I did not have any) and I also just made a half the recipe since it was my first time making it and I wasn't sure what to expect. I also used dry milk instead of evaporated milk since I did not have evaporated milk.
If you like graham crackers, this is a great recipe to try. Eating a graham cracker fresh out the oven made it worth the effort. I would like to find a recipe to make something similar to a whole grain or multigrain Wheat Thin or Wheatables cracker.
Today's experiment was to try to make pigs in a blanket using my own bread dough instead of Pillsbury crescent rolls. I figured that the homemade dough would make me feel better about giving them to my kids. Using the same dough I use for my bread, took half a loaf's worth and rolled it out like I was making sugar cookies. Then I covered with plastic wrap and let them sit in the sun on the table to rise. I then cut sections with a pizza cutter and rolled up cheese and a hotdog (Havarti cheese for me, American for the kids) - baked for 13 minutes. They were delicious and no guilt about eating the dough from a can. As I tell my husband, a few hours ago that flour wasn't even born yet. It was still just wheat in a bag. You can't get any fresher than that.
As for amounts... half a loaf of dough would make about 10 pigs in a blanket. I had way too much dough so I made the rest into crescent rolls in honor of Pillsbury. I've bought a lot of crescent rolls over the years but this might be the end of the line.
Check back tomorrow for my report on my Farmer's Market Stir-fry.
Today we had 2 new baked goods at our house... a mudpie and hamburger buns. My daughter was so excited to make the mudpie - it was her first. Here is our recipe:
Mud (it was raining so we didn't need to make our own) Grass Leaves Rocks Freshly Milled Flour (firmed up the pie nicely when it got too watery)
Bake at 300 degrees until firm. Sprinkle pretties on it and wait until Daddy comes home to try to trick him into thinking it is a chocolate pie.
Hamburger Buns: I decided to try making hamburger buns to go with our beef brisket from Costco. I just used my regular bread recipe using freshly milled flour and formed the dough into balls but then I thought maybe they would be too spherical so flattened them a little - balls probably would have been fine (everything is an experiment right now so you can learn from my mistakes). I baked them for 16 minutes and they turned out fantastic. I think I could do 10 buns to a batch of dough so they weren't so big. Everyone seemed to love them and I have now added another thing to my list of things I will now make myself and not buy at the store again. These will be great to put in my son's school lunch since they are easier to handle than the sliced bread.
I will backtrack at some point and talk about the basics of milling but if I try to post everything in a logical order, I'll never get anything posted so just think of this as one of those movies that has lots of flashbacks.
