Tortilla Success....finally

Who would have thought a little bit of corn flour and water could be such a big deal?

I've been trying for the last few weeks to make my own corn tortilla's with no success!  It's been very frustrating!

So I read a few blogs, visited a few cooking web sites, read recipes and figured no problem I could figure this out....lol....it's not that easy!

Now I have to preface this with the knowledge that it takes a lot longer to grind popcorn than beans or rice.  So the grinding process to get 3 cups of corn meal took a few days.  So when I finally got enough corn ground I was very eager to make a tortilla.

My first try I ground popcorn seeds added water pressed them with a flat cooking pan.  It fell apart before I ever got to the stove.  And I mean disintegrated as soon as I removed the plastic wrap.  No go

So back to the mill (a few days later) to run the corn through it two more times.  It looked pretty fine to me so I tried again.  Pretty much a repeat of the first experiment only this time it looked like a tortilla but just fell apart. Again I was using a pan to press.

Now as I type this I realize I should have taken pictures of my kitchen and the tortilla tries before and after each try and you'd know why I waited a few days in between tries :-) Corn tends to travel and I found that I had to deep clean my kitchen each time....ah the joys of a learning process...

Now I have a cast iron tortilla press so I decided to try again, my hope revived with a new kitchen tool.:-)

#3 We ground the corn more and got an even finer grind.  It was very pretty corn flour but apparently not fine enough!  It too fell apart!  Uuuggghhh will this never work!  It can't be this hard.  People make tortilla's in the woods with rocks!

#4 Same day as #3 only this time I broke open a bag of Maseca corn flour for tortilla's.  It made my fine grind look like corn meal.  The stuff is like the finest powder known to man.  I can't believe how incredibly soft and fine it is.  Then the light bulb turns on and I understand my failure to make the last ones work.   You have to use corn that is basically powder to make tortillas.   So try number 4 goes much smoother...a little water...a little oil, a little hand mixing, a cast iron pan that is hot but not to hot....and I have beautiful, yummy tortillas that the kids line up to eat! 

Success finally!  Even if the corn was not from my mill....now I know what I need to do to make tortillas.  So back to the grind (literally) to see how many times through the mill it takes to make corn flour that fine.