D.I.Y. Delicious: Recipes and Ideas for Simple Food From Scratch (16 page)

I love flour tortillas. I grew up eating them as an after-school snack with grated orange cheese or margarine and cinnamon-sugar. Those memories are hard to shake. Just the same, I pretty much gave up on eating flour tortillas after reading the labels on the ones sold in grocery stores. For some reason, I thought they were difficult to make. Not true! These work beautifully and cook up delightfully with a tender flakiness. I like to add a little wheat flour for structure and nutrition. You’ll barely be able to resist tearing through them right out of the skillet. Resist you must, though, because they make wonderful
Zucchini and Mushroom Quesadillas
. You’ll want leftovers, too, for reheating and eating with a little Cultured Butter and a sprinkling of cinnamon-sugar. The dough is easy to work with so there is no need to use a tortilla press
.

TIME REQUIRED:
45 minutes active; 30 minutes passive (excluding butter preparation)

YIELD:
twelve 8-inch tortillas

2½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

½ cup whole-wheat flour

1½ teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 tablespoons
Cultured Butter
or store-bought butter, softened

In a large bowl, mix together the all-purpose flour, wheat flour, salt, and baking powder. Add the oil and butter and mix with your hands, rubbing the fat into the flour with your fingertips. Pour in 1¼ cups warm water a little at a time and knead for 2 or 3 minutes in the bowl. The dough should be soft and pliable but not sticky. Let the dough rest for 15 or 20 minutes under a damp towel.

Form the dough into 12 equal balls, about 2 ounces each. Let rest for about 10 minutes (longer is okay if covered with a damp towel).

Heat a dry cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat.

On a lightly floured board or counter, flatten one dough ball slightly with your palm and, using a rolling pin, roll it out into a thin circle 8 inches in diameter. When the skillet is hot, but not smoking, gently peel the tortilla off the counter and carefully place it in the pan. Cook for 1 minute, and then flip it over with a spatula. It should have small brown spots. Cook for 1 minute on the other side. Nestle the cooked tortillas in a clean towel as you finish cooking the rest. Once you get a rhythm going, you should be able to roll out one while cooking another. The dough is easy to work with and shouldn’t give you trouble. You may need to adjust the heat under the pan if you notice the tortillas cooking either too quickly or too slowly. Use the tortillas immediately or let them cool, wrap well, and refrigerate for up to 1 week or freeze for 2 months.

Ordinary vegetables become extraordinary when tucked into homemade flour tortillas. Vary these to your liking or according to the season. You can make them with beans, chicken, winter squash, or any other number of seasonal vegetables. Use store-bought cheese if you’re not feeling ambitious enough to make your own, but if you at least make the Simple Tomato Salsa or the Avocado-Tomatillo Salsa and the Flour Tortillas, you’re in for a real treat
.

TIME REQUIRED:
about 45 minutes active (excluding salsa, cheese, and tortilla preparation)

YIELD:
4 servings

3½ to 4 tablespoons vegetable oil

½ yellow or white onion, sliced

About ¾ pound mushrooms of your choice, sliced

2 medium zucchini, cut in half lengthwise and sliced

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1½ teaspoons dried Mexican oregano, crumbled

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

8
Flour Tortillas
or store-bought tortillas

About 1¼ cups
Fresh Whole-Milk Soft Cheese
or store-bought grating cheese or queso fresco

About 1½ cups
Simple Tomato Salsa
or
Avocado-Tomatillo Salsa
, plus more for serving

Fresh cilantro leaves for garnish

In a medium, heavy skillet over medium heat, warm 2 tablespoons of the oil. Add the onion and cook until wilted and fragrant, about 8 minutes. Add the mushrooms, zucchini, garlic, oregano, a pinch or two of salt, and a couple of grindings of pepper. Cook, stirring, until the mushrooms are brown and soft, about 10 minutes. Taste and correct the seasoning for salt. The vegetables can be prepared from several hours to 2 days ahead and refrigerated.

Lay the tortillas out on a flat surface and distribute the filling among them, arranging it on one side of each tortilla so they can easily be folded over. Sprinkle the cheese on top of the vegetables, distributing it evenly among the tortillas. Spoon the salsa on top of the filling and cheese, distributing it evenly.

Heat a heavy, well-seasoned, cast-iron skillet over medium heat and add just a whisper of oil—about 1 teaspoon. Fold the quesadillas over and cook them, two at a time, until brown and slightly crisp, and the filling is warmed through, about 3 minutes per side. Keep the cooked quesadillas warm in a low (250-degree-F) oven while you finish cooking the remaining ones, adding more oil as needed. Serve immediately with more salsa on the side and a garnish of cilantro.

This is a method anyone can use anywhere to make his or her own sourdough starter from scratch. It’s true that sourdough bread from California will taste different from sourdough bread in North Carolina, because different areas have different types of wild yeasts and organisms, but every part of the world has them
.

TIME REQUIRED:
10 minutes per day over about 1 week

Start with equal parts flour and water. I like to start with 4 ounces whole-wheat flour and 4 ounces warm water. After your starter gets going, you can use half unbleached white bread flour and half whole-wheat, all-white, or other types of flours. Starting with whole wheat is good because it ferments more efficiently than white flour.

In a medium glass bowl (which I prefer) or hard, food-grade plastic container, stir together the flour and water and cover with a tea towel, fastened with a rubber band to keep out fruit flies. Leave it out at room temperature. The starter needs to breathe, so don’t cover it with a tight lid unless you are keeping it dormant in the refrigerator.

After 24 hours, check it for bubbles and a fermented aroma. It will probably take 2 to 3 days to begin to ferment.

Each day, discard half the starter (and compost it) and stir in 4 ounces warm water and 4 ounces flour. It’s easier to mix if you add the water first. Cover and let sit.

Leave it at room temperature and feed the starter once a day for approximately 1 week before baking with it.

Keep your starter covered in the refrigerator between baking sessions. See
the instructions
on feeding in preparation for a bake.

It should be bubbly and have a good beery, floury aroma. If nothing happens after a week, you may need to help it along. Many people use raisins (unsulfured) because of the active wild yeasts on their surfaces. Just throw a few raisins into your starter and discard them after the starter gets going. I have never needed to do this, though.

If the starter is bad, there will be no mistaking it. It will smell absolutely revolting. If this happens, it just means some bad bacteria got into it. Discard it and start over. This is a rare occurrence.

Once the starter is colonized by good bacteria, you won’t need to worry about bad stuff taking over because the bad bacteria don’t stand a chance in an active, healthy starter.

Once you have a good healthy starter, the only way to kill or harm it is to stop feeding it and leave it out.

If you need to leave town for longer than 2 or 3 weeks, feed your starter with a larger percentage of flour to water to make it very dry. It should be crumbly. Keep it refrigerated for up to 1 month, or freeze it if you must be away longer. When you return, it will take a few daily regular feedings with a higher proportion of water to bring it back up, so plan a couple of extra feedings before baking.

Try to use your starter every 2 weeks or more often. If you go longer though, don’t worry. Sometimes you’ll just need an extra feeding before baking. You’ll get to know your starter and its particular behavior over time. I have left mine unattended with no special treatment in the refrigerator for as long as a month and a half and after a couple of extra feedings to increase its activity it was fine.

Baking bread requires a little advance thought and planning, so read the note on feeding your starter in preparation for baking before you begin this recipe
.

This recipe and the
Sourdough Cornmeal–Pumpkin Seed Bread
were both developed in consultation with artisan baker
Eduardo Morell
. Many of Eduardo’s loaves have this loaf’s identical ratio of wheat to white flour, providing a nice balance of tenderness and flavor. This loaf can be baked in one of two ways: in a one-pound loaf pan or free-form in a closed ceramic bread baker, sometimes called a cloche. Instructions for both follow
.

Measurements are given in weights and cups. I highly recommend buying a kitchen scale to ensure bread success
.

After a few baking sessions, you will learn to adjust to your kitchen’s atmosphere and your preference. Be aware that moister dough is more difficult to shape but will produce a loaf with a more desirable, open crumb. Add more flour and your dough will be easier to shape, but will yield a denser bread. Beginners can start with a slightly greater percentage of flour to water and work up to moister dough as they become more adept at shaping
.

TIME REQUIRED:
about 40 minutes active; 7 hours passive (excluding starter preparation)

YIELD:
one 1-pound loaf

11 ounces (about 1
cups) slightly warmer than lukewarm water (about 100 degrees F)

5 ounces (about
cup) recently fed and activated
Sourdough Starter