Sourdough Tortillas
Sourdough Tortillas.
I always get questions about my Sourdough Tortillas. I first published the recipe together with my Avocado Tacos recipe. However, I decided to write a separate post about it so I could explain a few things a little better.
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Ok, let’s get to it. First of all, your sourdough starter doesn’t have to be active to make these sourdough tortillas.
That means, you can use your discard. Recipes that use sourdough discard are beautiful to me, because I feed my starter so frequently, I always have a tone of it to discard.
If your sourdough starter is active, no problem using that either. Go for it! But you don’t have to go out of your way, feed your starter, and then wait for it to be active to start making these Sourdough Tortillas.
These sourdough tortillas have a much more beautiful texture compared to the regular flour ones, in my opinion. They are so soft, and taste amazing! By far, my favorite tortillas to make and eat.
Depending on your location (altitude and humidity level), what kind of flour you are using, or what kind of starter you have, you might need to adjust the flour quantity. If the dough is too sticky, add some more flour to it. In the instructions, I specify to add only 4 cups of flour to the initial dough, and add the remaining 1 cup as you knead, and as necessary. You don’t want to add way too much flour, this is supposed to be a very soft dough, not too stiff.
I keep my starter at 100% hydration, which means I always feed it with equal amounts of water, flour, and starter. So, if I am feeding my starter, I usually discard everything but 100 grams of it, then I feed it with 100 grams of water, and 100 grams of flour.
You want to take that into consideration when making these tortillas. In case you keep your starter at a lower hydration level, you might want to add some less flour to the dough.
Also, feel free to half the recipe if you don’t wanna make about 30 tortillas. And if you don’t want to half the recipe, you have many options on what to do with leftover tortillas.
Can I freeze sourdough tortilla dough?
You may freeze just the raw dough if you want to. I actually did that this time to experiment. After making my dough, I let it rise, then I portioned it in half, cooked one half and froze the rest for about 1 week.
Then, when I went to use my frozen dough, I let it thaw in the fridge overnight and the next day proceeded to portion it, roll it out, and cook it normally. They came out tasting fresh and delicious! I’d recommend freezing it for up to 1-2 months.
Can I freeze cooked tortillas?
You may freeze already cooked tortillas. I like to place my tortillas between sheets of parchment paper, then wrap them with some foil, place inside a zip loc freezer bag, and they will keep well in the freezer for about 2 months.
How to make tortilla chips with leftover tortillas?
If you have an excess of tortillas, you may slice your tortillas in triangles, then drizzle some olive oil over them and possibly other spices (salt, paprika, garlic powder, za’atar) and bake in the oven until golden brown, about 5 minutes. And you will have yourself tortilla chips! Most likely the best tortilla chips you’ve ever had in your life.
So, lots of options here on what to do with all of these sourdough tortillas!
This last time I made these delicious Cauliflower Tacos with Avocado Crema.
They were so good, it was hard to stop eating them!! The breaded cauliflower was baked in the oven. I added the delicious fresh corn on the cob we got at the farmers market, and it made for a fantastic #tacotuesday!
I hope you like my recipe for sourdough tortillas. If you are an avid sourdough baker, I am sure you will!
Thanks for reading, and have a beautiful day!
If you want to check out some more sourdough recipes, please click here.
Also, check out this recipe for my Spinach Tortillas. And if you want to, you can check out my recipe for regular Flour Tortillas right here.
And here are some Taco recipes to accompany your Sourdough Tortillas.
Sourdough Tortillas
Ingredients
- 125 g sourdough starter (discard 100% hydration) (1/2 cup, 4.5 oz)
- 320 g warm water about 120F (1 1/3 cup, 11 oz)
- 56 g vegetable oil (1/4 cup, 2 oz)
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 637 g all-purpose flour (5 cups, 22.5 oz)
- Plus extra flour for dusting
Instructions
- Mix sourdough starter, water, oil, salt, baking powder, and 4 cups of flour in the bowl of a stand mixer and knead with the dough hook for 4-6 minutes, until dough comes together in a smooth, non-sticky ball. If it’s too sticky, start adding the remaining cup of flour until you obtain the necessary consistency. You may not use the whole cup of flour, so just go slowly until you reach a dough that isn't too sticky or too dry.
- You can also mix the ingredients with a wooden spoon and then knead by hand.
- Once you’re done kneading, place dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a towel or plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature for about 30 minutes.
- Divide the dough into about 32 equal pieces. I use a scale to measure out my dough and I usually go for 30 grams per piece.
- Using the palm of your hands, roll each piece of dough into a ball, by making a circular motion, pressing down slightly on the dough, against the counter. Use very little flour to do this because you need the traction of the counter to shape the balls.
- Cover dough pieces with a towel and let them rest for 5 minutes.
- Start rolling each dough piece into a circle that measures out about 7 inches in diameter.
- I like to roll out as many dough pieces as my counter space will allow me to lay out, before cooking them.
- I’ve actually already used my pasta machine to roll the dough pieces out too, and it works fantastic, btw!
- Start cooking the tortillas by heating up a cast iron frying pan or a non-stick frying pan over medium high heat. (I actually use 2 or 3 pans sometimes to speed up the process)
- When the pan is hot, add tortilla. Cook on one side for about 1 minute, flip it over and cook on the other side for about 30 seconds.
- You don’t want your tortilla to burn, so cook it until it’s just slightly browned. If you burn your tortillas, they might become hard after they cool down.
- Lay out cooked tortillas on a baking sheet and let them cool slightly before placing them in a tortilla warmer or closed container. That’s because if you immediately put the tortillas away while hot, they will become soggy.
Notes
Nutrition
These are great! I’ve made tortillas heaps of times but this is my favourite recipe so far. Knocked another recipe I’ve been using for years off the top spot to get there too! Love the nice soft dough and the flavours magic.
Aweeee this comment makes my day! thank you so much!!!!!
These were very lacking in flavor. Kids like lard in their tortillas not oil. Texture was slimy. These do not stick together unless your dough is sticky.
Will try again with lard.
Such a great and easy recipe! We make this once a week. We double the recipe and then freeze them!
Ohhh that’s awesome! Thank you so much! I also usually freeze them, or halve the batch 🙂 freezing makes it so practical for the rest of the week!
EXCELLENT! Wonderful flavor. Made for guests and was asked for the recipe….the comment was”I may never buy store bought again”. thanks!!!!
awe that’s so nice to hear! thanks a million!!!!
Made this tonight and it was amazing!! I’ve never made tortillas from scratch before but I found the recipe really easy to follow. Definitely labor-intensive, but so worth it!!
Thank you so much! I am so happy you liked it! Nice job making them!
I would like to use my pasta machine but don’t understand how that would work. How do you get a 7” round tortilla? Do you send it through a couple times and then finish with a rolling pin? Very excited to get started! These sound delicious.
I roll on each setting once until i get to setting 5 or 6, depending on how thick I want it. And I just kinda shape it with my hands as the doll comes out of the pasta machine.
Awesome recipe!
Made quesadillas with it and my hub love it so much!
Wondering if i could freeze rolled out dough instead?
You mean the rolled out dough without cooking? Hmm I am not sure. It would have to be an experiment. I’ve frozen the cooked tortillas, and also the whole dough ball, but never just the rolled out dough.
Yeah, was thinking to roll out everything and freeze it and make it easier for the next time.
Thanks for the quick reply!
Hi, I’m wondering how you froze the dough? Did you put it in a zippered freezer bag? If so…do you need to oil the bag first? Thanks for the recipe….I am really looking forward to trying it! From all the reviews, they sound great! Oh, also, did you use discard straight from the fridge, or bring it to room temp.? Thank you!
Great questions. Yes in a zippered freezer bag, no oil in the bag.
Also, yes I would use the starter at room temperature, not cold 🙂
Thank you and thanks so much for the quick response!!!
Amazing thank you xxx
thank you!
Just made these. Came out great. Thank you for the recipe.
Thank you so much 🙂
Hi, I was wondering how long these would last out on the counter in an air tight container or in the fridge?
I keep them on the counter for a couple of days, or in the fridge for up to 5 days. You can also freeze them for quite a bit of time (1-2 months), and rewarm on the microwave or on the pan, or just let them thaw overnight in the fridge.
Tried these with our first discard from our sourdough starter, and I was really surprised not to get any sourdough taste in these tortillas, but otherwise was very pleased with what I got. Especially given how many this recipe made! My usual go-to recipe for tortillas made maybe 10 or 12, while I got 30 easily out of this, and probably could’ve gotten more if I’d been trying for even sizing.
That said, I would’ve liked it if there was a bit of a breakdown on the flour by weight, because while I started doing everything on the scale, I wound up doing the flour by volume simply because it’s not an easily divisible-by-5 number of grams, and I didn’t want to put more than I needed into the initial mix. Wound up having to put a little more than 5 cups of flour in to get it to not be incredibly sticky and wet, but the finished product was a much smoother, suppler dough than I’ve gotten with other recipes, and it took very minimal effort to form it into balls, where my usual recipe was rather dry and took considerably more effort to shape.
I think I’m going to give this a second try when we have more starter discard, and try working out the division of the flour by weight to see if that might not fix some of the minor problems I had this time around. The final product is tasty, and the sheer quantity of tortillas I get out of it makes this recipe totally worth it.
Great recipe! Here in Italy it isn’t always easy to find tortillas and our local supermarket hasn’t had them for a couple of weeks so I found your recipe and made some!
They were waaaaay better than bought ones.
I made 1/4 quantity as we are only 2 people and I did get 8 tortillas out of it. My only comments are that I needed a LOT more flour than the 1/4 quantity suggests but I know tjat flours all absorb differently. Having said that I never would have got 8 x 7″ tortillas if I had used less flour (ie had less dough) and the balls weighed more than 30g. I don’t think I could have got a 30g ball rolled to 7″ without it being paper thin.
Anyway, needing the extra flour made ot work for me and we enjoyed our fajitas!! OH said they were much better than the shop bought ones 🙂
Wow awesome! Thank you so much!!!
Invest in a tortilla press. Looking forward to making these as I make Masa and buckwheat based ones all the time.
I made a half batch and rolled the tortillas by hand. It wasn’t hard at all and the tortillas were AMAZING! One comment stated that the 30 gram balls would not yield 7″ tortillas, but they did, just as your recipe stated, and they made taco night even more delicious. Thank you, Camila! Al the best to you!
Thank you so much Anne!!!! I appreciate it! 🙂