I could use some advice about corn tortillas. I am from the
Northeast and although I travel to the Southwest fairly frequently
I'm not sure I would know what a properly made corn tortilla is
supposed to taste like. I just tried to make my first batch, by hand
rolling and using masa harina corn flour. The dough, mixed 2:1 by
volume masa to water, felt right and rolled out right between two
plastic sheets (a pair of thin, flexible, plastic cutting
surfaces). It took a couple of tries hand-rolling until I could
scrape the tortilla off the plastic without it breaking but it
worked. However, to my unschooled palette they tasted flat, like
bread made without salt. Eaten by themselves, even with butter they
needed some salt to get a real corn flavor to come through. Do you
add salt to the mix?
I usually only see wheat flour tortillas in restaurants here in the
east or hard corn taco shells and chips. Are the taco shells and
nacho chips made differently? The chips are usually salted on the
outside but not always. We had some unsalted chips at a restaurant
recently and they were excellent with salsa but I suspect the dough
was salted before baking because the corn flavor came through much
better than with the tortillas I made. Any suggestions would be
appreciated. If I can get these to taste a bit better I may spring
for a tortilla press.
Werner