Whole Wheat Flour Tortillas
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Real food flour tortillas are a product that I just can’t find on the store shelves.
My children love quesadillas, so I like to have lots of tortillas on hand. I make a big batch of these tortillas about once a month and I put half of them in the freezer. That way, I can pull a few out of the freezer and whip up quesadillas for the kids when I make something for dinner for the grown-ups that’s too ambitious for my children’s palates. It’s also a nice change from a sandwich in their school lunches.
I usually cook the whole batch and then freeze some, but you can also freeze the dough in single tortilla portions.
Whole Wheat Flour Tortillas
Recommended Equipment
Ingredients
- 5 cups white whole wheat flour
- 1/2 cup melted ghee or butter
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
- 1 tbs olive oil
Instructions
- Mix together the flour, ghee, and salt in a stand mixer (I use a dough hook). Gradually add the water and continue mixing until smooth dough is formed.
- Separate the dough into 16 evenly sized balls. Cover the dough with plastic wrap for 15 to 30 minutes.
- Heat a cast-iron pan over medium-high heat and add 1/2 tablespoon of oil.
- On a floured surface, roll a ball of dough into thin circle. You want to get it quite thin so it doesn’t turn out thick like pita bread. Cook the tortilla in the hot pan for a minute, and then flip it over and cook the other side for 20 seconds. Remove to a cooling rack.
- Continue this method with the remaining balls of dough. When you're done cooking half the tortillas, add the other 1/2 tablespoon of oil to the pan. I roll out each tortilla as the previous one is cooking in the pan.
- Serve within an hour of cooking or refrigerate/freeze the tortillas until ready to use.
Approximate Nutrition Info
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Whole Wheat Flour Tortillas Price Breakdown
This recipe yields 16 tortillas and it costs a total of $1.56, or $.10 per tortilla. This is a much lower price than the hydrogenated oil-laden tortillas that line the Mexican food aisle at the grocery store, and you can actually feel good about eating my version.
Method adapted from this recipe.
Have you tried these with gluten free flour? Haven’t found a taco wrap that my gluten free family likes.
These look delicious!
I don’t think I’ve tried these with gluten free flour, but it’s definitely worth a shot. Please let me know if you try it.
Hi,
This may be a weird question but I always thought that bread or whatever grain was only 100% whole wheat if the first ingredient was whole, and since the flour is white whole wheat, is it still whole wheat? I am not sure if that makes sense! Haha
Great question, Aila! White whole wheat is 100% whole grain. It comes from a different variety of wheat than traditional whole wheat flour comes from. I prefer white whole wheat in baking because it yields a slightly lighter, less dense final product.
If you use butter instead of ghee, do you still melt it first? Also, do you have any experience with a tortilla press? I’ve had varied experiences rolling out dough (usually frustrating, as in past pie crust endeavours!) but wouldn’t want to fork out the dough (ha ha) on a press unless it’s really helpful (not to mention sacrifice the kitchen storage space if I’m not going to use it!)
Sarah, you would melt the butter just like the ghee. I had a tortilla press briefly, but I returned it. They’re helpful for corn tortillas, but for flour tortillas it’s easy to roll them out. The tortilla presses tend to be small like a typical corn tortilla, so I wouldn’t recommend getting one unless you plan to regularly make corn tortillas.
Oh my goodness, I made them tonight and they were SO good and so easy! I’ve never worked with dough that’s so easy to roll out – NOTHING like pie crust. I didn’t even need to flour my countertop, and it peeled off every time. Thank you so much for sharing! Like the honey bread, this will become a staple in our house. 🙂
We ate them filled with this recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/quinoa-and-black-beans/detail.aspx with some lemon juice sprinkled on top and a little *real* guacamole. Yum!
The only thing I wasn’t sure about was if I cooked them correctly. I cooked them on a large electric griddle so I could do two at a time. I set it to about 325 but I’m not sure that was right – they didn’t puff up at all?
Also, you should check out the recipes on this website: http://www.thriftyfoods.com. It’s a grocery store chain on the west coast of Canada, but the recipes are super yummy – many are naturally *real* and the rest can be made to be with very few adaptations. I made this on the weekend and it was tasty: http://www.thriftyfoods.com/EN/main/cook/recipes/recipe.php?rid=2024
Thanks for the tip, Sarah. I’ll check out that website. I’m glad you liked the tortillas. They may puff up if you set the temperature a bit higher on your griddle, but they taste great either way.
Thank you for your submission on Nourishing Treasures’ Make Your Own! Monday link-up.
Check back tomorrow when the new link-up is running to see if you were one of the top 3 featured posts! 🙂
Just curious–do you soak your flour first?
I have experimented with soaking my flour first, but I haven’t tried it with this recipe yet. It’s a great idea, though.
Thanks!
That’s interesting you use oil in the pan – I always thought flour tortillas were fried in a dry pan. Learn something new every day! Thanks for linking up to Healthy 2Day Wednesday, and come back next week to see if you were featured.
Anne, I find that a thin coat of oil is helpful when making these in a cast iron pan.
Making these today!
Thanks for letting me know, Steph. I hope you like them!
I’ve been toying with the idea of making tortillas homemade, but they always seemed hard to make. You make it look easy! I’ll definitely be trying this soon!
You’ll love these, Jill. Let me know how they come out.
I hope you like these tortillas, Sarah. There are so many problems with commercial tortillas – I’m much happier making them at home.
Thanks! I have been looking for a an easy WW recipe 🙂 I hate how overly salty commercial ones are as well 🙁