Soaked Tortillas - long winded success

Whole grains, nuts and seeds contain phytic acid, which if not taken care of, can interfere with the absorption of minerals by the body. Phytates, I gather are BAD for us. So, in my quest to find ways to make my favorite grain-based foods from whole grains, I decided to work on my flour tortilla recipe.

Here is a little bowl, into which I put:

1 cup freshly ground whole wheat flour
1/2 cup warm water
1 Tablespoon liquid milk kefir

It was then covered with plastic wrap and it soaked the grain all night, which ended up being about 9 hours by the time I got back to it. ( I am told the minimum soaking time should be at least 7 hours. )



Here you can see my griddle, this morning, heating on the stove set to "medium". It looks dirty. That's because it is from a failure I had yesterday with this project. Instead of water with a little milk kefir, I soaked it in straight kefir. It made a much too tender and cake-like product, so I just saved the equipment overnight without washing. I know, I know....



Here is how the dough looked this morning:



Now I am going to stir in the following:

2 teaspoons extra-virgin coconut oil
1/2 teaspoon Celtic sea salt (unrefined)
1 teaspoon Rumford baking powder



Here it is all stirred together:



Turned out onto my bread board sprinkled liberally with unbleached white flour:



Knead vigorously for 3 minutes using a little more flour as needed to prevent sticking:



Cut into 6 pieces:



Form the pieces into little smoothish round things by tucking under the cut edges:



Ok, so here starts the other part of the experiment. My daughter gave me a lovely tortilla press for Mother's Day. (No, you cannot adopt her. ;-) I think these are mainly used for corn tortillas, and that will be my next project, but I decided to give it a try with the flour kind. I did half of them this way.



Put a piece of wax paper on the bottom, sprinkle with flour, place the ball of dough kind of close to the hinge:



Sprinkle with more flour and cover with another piece of waxed paper and then press:




Here it is after peeling off one piece of the waxed paper:



The tortilla on the hot griddle:



Turned over to cook the other side:



Trying out plastic wrap as an alternative:



The pressed tortillas were just too thick, and so I went back to my usual method, which is to quickly roll them out, one by one, and cook on the griddle:



Here is one all rolled out:



How it looks when the first side is done. See the little bubbles?



Flipped over and cooking the other side:



Finished and on a plate! See the long spatula there? That is what I use to flip them over, but of course you can use anything that works.



Side by side comparison. Pressed tortillas on the right, rolled out on the left:



Then I cover them with a little cloth until it's time to eat!



So quick and easy and versatile. Think tacos, wraps, enchiladas.... yum!

And now I have my healthy version!

I am toying with the idea of using the press to make flat breads. I will report back if I have any success with that.