Rolling Out a New Life with Tortillas de Harina

On a warm spring day of my youth, a bowl and rolling pin marked the beginning of my new life as an independent woman.  I was heading off to college and my mother took me to Woolworth's in Laredo, Texas to make the purchase.  The bowl was a sturdy green ceramic that couldn't have cost more than two dollars and the rolling pin might have cost even less, a far cry from some of the things I crave nowadays from places that sell gourmet cookware.

Through the years and through all my moves, I carried them around with me like a passport, a reminder of who I was and where I came from, until I finally lost track of both the bowl and the palote (rolling pin). But the shopping trip to buy them remains one of the fondest memories I have of my mother.

I imagine it was a bittersweet moment for her; I was her first-born daughter and the first to travel far away to study. She knew I would probably never again live at home, not to mention in the same town. Yet she didn't betray her emotions. I did not understand what she must have felt that day until I became a mother myself.  All these years later, I remember we bought the bowl and palote and celebrated the joy of the moment over a fountain coke at the drugstore counter.

We bought the bowl and the palote to make sure I would have the tools necessary to amasar, to prepare the dough for the daily morning ritual of making the tortillas needed to accompany breakfast. In time, as a busy student and later as a working mother, I would come to abandon the idea of having to make them from scratch.  The fat content in the shortening traditionally used in flour tortillas also became a reason to go without. I began to prefer corn tortillas that I bought at the grocery store. The flour ones became a special treat to look forward to when my mother visited.

Corn tortillas are the norm in most of Mexico. However, in northern Mexico and along the U.S. border, both wheat flour and corn tortillas are eaten; wheat are for breakfast and corn for lunch and dinner.

I've adapted this recipe from my mother's, cutting the quantity for shortening in half and substituting with peanut or canola oil for health considerations. Also, in my house, we didn't stack our flour tortillas.  We liked them flaky, so we separated each one, leaning them against the inside of a basket where they could cool slightly without becoming sweaty or gummy. And we would eat them like that, fresh, warm, and delightfully flaky.

Tortillas de Harina/Flour Tortillas

Author: Gilda V. Carbonaro

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 15 mins

Total time: 30 mins

Serves: 4

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons shortening
• 2 tablespoons peanut or canola oil
• 1/2 cup warm water

Instructions:

1. In a large bowl mix the salt with the flour.


2. Add the shortening and oil and mix thoroughly with your hands.


3. Form a dough by adding the water slowly with one hand as you mix the dough with the other, until a soft dough is formed.


4. Roll out the tortillas and cook on a warm griddle, turning on both sides.


5. Place in a basket without stacking them as they come out.


6. Serve immediately with eggs, beans, etc.

Remembrance: Pan de Muertos

When I was younger, I dreamed of my hometown, Laredo, Texas, almost on a weekly basis. I roamed its streets, looking for my house, feeling anxious because I could no longer find it. I took buses that dropped me off at streets I no longer recognized. I knocked at houses where no one knew my family. I walked up and down Kearney Street, looking for the mesquite tree that grew in front of our house, not recognizing anything. To add to my anxiety in this recurring dream, I knew my loved ones were waiting for me to arrive from this long trip home. Funny how dreams are a tapestry of our aspirations, our worries, and our sorrows.

Last night after many years, I dreamed again of going back to Laredo. It was a collage of symbols, of the surreal, of longing, and of loss. In the dream I found my son under the mesquite tree in front of my house, waiting for me. My mother's white dishtowel flapped from one of the branches.  My son was dressed in camouflage as he extended his hand to me to tell me, as he always did, that everything was alright. He led me inside the house where his grandmother and the rest of the family was waiting, gathered around a table bedecked with foods that we all knew he liked.

It comforts me to believe that our dearly departed and beloved come back to be among us on November 1, Día de los Angelitos, and November 2, Día de los Muertos. But the truth is, I always feel close to my son. From my second story window, on this beautiful fall day, I look down at the brightly colored leaves scattered below and can almost see him, looking up at me, proudly stepping out of his new car as he did a few years before he deployed to Iraq.

It was comforting to prepare this simple egg bread, Pan de Muertos. I've woven together recipes belonging to different relatives in Mexico with my own knowledge of bread baking. The result is a very easy brioche-type bread that is not difficult to make and it doesn't stray much from the traditional bread of Mexico. It is an orange blossom and anise-scented, barely sweet, airy bread. Sweetness, love, remembrance, lament...all are part of this ritual. It's hard to believe I'm here, blending, kneading, baking this bread in this quiet house, thinking of my son and all those who did not return from a war that finally ended, much too late.

A whispered Why? floats in the air, unanswered, and the yeast continues to do its work.

Pan de Muertos

Recipe Type: bread, desert

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 3 hours

Cook time: 45 mins

Total time: 3 hours 45 mins

Serves: 8

Dear readers, The error in this recipe has been corrected.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup warm water


• 1/4 cup butter, room temperature


• 3 cups unbleached flour


• 1 packet yeast


• pinch of salt


• 2 teaspoons anise seed


• 1 tablespoon orange zest


• 3/8 cups sugar


• 2 jumbo eggs or 3 small eggs, room temperature


• 2 tablespoons orange blossom water


• granulated sugar for sprinkling


• For the glaze: 1 oz cone of piloncillo and 3/4 cup water and juice of one orange

Instructions

1. In a large bowl mix the sugar, flour, anise, salt and ½ cup of the flour and then mix in the butter.


2. The eggs, the water, and orange blossom water should be combined in a separate bowl, mixed well, and added to the first mixture.


3. Add another ½ cup of flour.


4. Add the yeast and another bit of flour until you have gradually added the rest of the flour and a dough is formed.


5. Knead the dough on a floured surface for about 3 minutes.


6. Place the ball of dough into a bowl large enough to allow the dough to rise and cover with a slightly damp dishcloth.


7. Cover the bowl with a lid so that the heat and moisture will allow the dough to rise.


8. Let it rise near a warm area for about 1 hour and a half.


9. Punch down the dough and shape it into a large ball, leaving small pieces of dough to form the ball on top and the four rolled pieces that form the 'bone' shapes.


10. Let this shaped dough rise for another hour in a warm spot of your kitchen.


11. Brush the glaze on it, (see below), sprinkle with granulated sugar and place in 350 degree oven for 45 minutes or until it is a golden brown.

Notes

For the glaze:
Bring a 1 oz. cone of piloncillo to boil in about ¾ cup of water until it dissolves, let it boil until it thickens, add the juice of one orange, cook for another 3 minutes; then let it cool before brushing it on.

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