The little locally-owned supermarket up in Greenfield has a good selection of Mexican items — I don't mean Mission brand tortillas or Paul Newman salsa, I mean stuff like masa flour, corn husks for making tamales, and big bags of dried beans. This probably has something to do with the fact that this is farm country and we get a lot of seasonal workers on the farms during the growing season. So when I want cornmeal I get the five-pound bag of masa flour. It makes good cornbread and fine polenta.
But I'd never tried making tortillas before. Somehow I had it in my mind that they require a lot of labor. In a way that's true, but the drudgery comes in turning dried corn kernels into finely-ground masa flour. Nowadays we have machines for that, rather than some poor ancient Aztec woman sliding a chunk of stone back and forth. So the only drudgery involved is going to the supermarket for masa flour, and waiting in line at the checkout.
With that step automated, the actual process of making tortillas consists of:
Mix flour with water,
Roll into balls,
Squash the balls flat into tortillas, and
Cook on the griddle.
It was quick, easy, and the resulting tortillas were sturdy but tender. They tasted a lot better than the premade ones from the store. So I think I'm just going to make them myself from now on.
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