Tortillas de harina sobaqueras

As tradition built it

Tortillas de harina sobaqueras

40 to 50cm across, stretched almost translucent

Ingredients

• 5kg wheat flour
• 500g vegetable shortening
• 2.5 litres warm water
• 150g salt
• as needed flour, for dusting
• a little shortening, for your hands

Method

1. Heat the comal or disc.
2. Knead the shortening into the flour until the big lumps are gone. Add the water and salt and keep kneading to a smooth, firm dough.
3. With a little shortening on your hands, pull off balls of 90 to 100g. Rest them 30 minutes.
4. Pass each ball through flour and stretch it to a 7cm round. Rest a few minutes.
5. Lay the round over one arm and stretch the edges gently with your fingertips until it is as big as you want it, 40 to 60cm across.
6. Lay it on the hot comal for a few seconds and turn it.
7. Take it off and let it rest before serving.

Notes

No named tortillería or family could be traced as the definitive keeper of this specific technique.

The recipe is David Adrián Jáquez's, for Noro in Hermosillo: 2.5 litres of water to 5kg of flour, half its weight. Luz Noticias keeps the fat out of the dough, coats 50g balls in lard and rests them under a cloth; Grupo Animal makes 30 to 60g balls, cooks them 15 to 20 seconds a side and allows a rolling pin.

What a modern chef changes

Lard clarified, gluten given longer to relax

Rung 3

Method

1. Clarify the lard through a chinois before it goes into the dough, removing any milk solids or impurities for a cleaner-tasting, more neutral fat than most commercial lard offers.
2. Rest the dough under refrigeration for a full hour rather than the traditional 30 minutes at room temperature, letting the gluten relax further still before stretching.
3. Cook on a flat carbon-steel plancha set over the Big Green Egg run very hot, closer to a traditional comal's heat profile than most domestic hobs can reach.