We all enjoyed fresh tortillas hot off the grill yesterday morning for breakfast with our leftover Indian food. They were especially flavorful and ready to eat extra early because I made the dough up the night before the “nourishing traditions” way.

While I thoroughly appreciate the Nourishing Traditions principles of soaking grains for a lengthy time before eating them, I don’t always manage to do it. We eat an awful lot of grain around here in one form or another and, well, it isn’t always planned out a day ahead. (I am working on that!) The other day, however, I came across a post on Brian Glass’ nourishing traditions based blog about making tortilla dough with whey and letting it sit for 12 - 24 hours before rolling out the tortillas. Ah, a good and simple idea which I implemented right away.

You can see his more usual sized recipe in his post. Ours was a little different both because I make tortillas in much larger amounts and because I don’t include oil in my dough. I guess this makes the flat bread I make a cross between a tortilla and a chapatti which works out fine for us because we eat them with both Mexican and Indian food!

Overnight Tortillas

6 cups freshly ground whole wheat flour

3 tsp. sea salt

6 Tbl. whey plus enough lukewarm water to make a soft dough

Mix flour and salt with your hands. Measure the whey (I specifically used kefir whey as it has the greatest capacity for breaking down the phytates in the wheat) into a glass measuring cup and fill with the water up to about 2 cups. Add the water to the flour and stir with a fork. Add more lukewarm water or small amounts of unbleached flour to the dough until you get a nicely mixed soft dough. Flour the counter and turn out dough. Knead for a couple of minutes. Leave on floured counter, well covered, over night. The next morning, roll out tortillas and bake on a hot griddle.

We were all amazed at how much more flavorful these tortillas were than the usual “let sit for a half hour so the dough relaxes before rolling out” method of making tortillas. And they had such a wonderful chewiness and sturdiness that my husband used the uneaten ones to make mini-pizzas for lunch. I will definitely be making tortillas this way from now on. I think I had better also make up a batch or two and freeze them so that we can have these wonderful overnight tortillas on a whim!

For any of you who aren’t accustomed to making flour tortillas, I know this isn’t enough information to properly get you started. As soon as I can, I will put up more detailed instructions along with photographs and a video. Making tortillas is a family affair around here which is really fun and something I have been wanting to share.

As a matter of fact, I think I will go start one of those batches for the freezer this morning.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

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