Gluten Free Flour Tortillas

I get regular questions about using gluten-free flour to make tortillas, and I finally got around to experimenting with some options!

Here's what my starting point looked like:

From left to right:

Cup4Cup Gluten Free Flour
Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour
King Arthur's Gluten Free Measure for Measure Flour

If you're new to making flour tortillas I'll go over the process in this post, but you can always reference the original Flour Tortillas post to see a max gluten option. 

That recipe uses just four ingredients:

3 cups flour
3 tablespoons lard I use this home-rendered lard
1.5 teaspoons salt
1 cup warm water

Traditional flour tortillas are made using lard so that's what I'll use for these tests, but keep in mind that you can always use oil as the fat as seen in Flour Tortillas Made With Olive Oil. 

And since I'll be making three batches I'll cut the recipe in half:

1.5 cups flour
1.5 tablespoons lard
0.75 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup warm water

First up is Bob's Red Mill:

Start by adding the salt and gluten-free flour to a mixing bowl.   Add the lard and use your fingers to crumble it into the flour mixture. 

Add the warm water and combine it as much as you can with a spoon, then dumping it onto a work surface. 

Normally you knead this into a ball but I quickly found that kneading is quite different when there's no gluten!

The dough behaves more like corn tortilla dough, so it's just a matter of getting the water-to-flour ratio right to get it to combine. 

I added another splash of water to this batch to get it to form a cohesive dough.  

With regular flour tortillas you'll normally let this dough rest to let the gluten relax, but not these!   

You'll also normally use a rolling pin to flatten flour tortillas, but I was able to smoosh these like corn tortillas since there's no gluten.

Simply cover the dough ball with plastic to prevent sticking -- I used a Ziploc with the sides cut off. 

And smoosh 'em with a casserole dish or flat-bottomed skillet. 

If you've got the consistency right then the plastic will peel off the tortilla effortlessly. 

If it's sticking then most likely your dough is too wet -- simply add a few sprinklings of flour to your mixture and re-knead.  

We'll give these 45-60 seconds per side in a dry skillet, or until light brown spots are forming on the underside.  For my stove I used a tad over medium heat. 

Note that it can take some fiddling to get the temp of your stove right.  If you're getting black spots forming quickly then you'll need to lower the heat, if it's taking minutes to get any color at all then you'll need to raise the heat. 

Here's how the Bob's Red Mill batch looked after cooking:

And the flavor?

Not bad!

But not great!

They were a little chewy, but I think my expectations were quite low so I was pleasantly surprised to see that these were in the ballpark. 

Next up was King Arthur's.

Here's how this batch looked after cooking:

And the result?

These had a lighter consistency compared to Bob's, but they also had a more prominent starchy flavor.     

Last up was Cup4Cup.

The first thing I noticed about these was how the dough behaved.  It was elastic and had the consistency of regular flour tortilla dough. 

Note in the ingredient list above that Cup4Cup has milk powder in it.   I'm not sure if this is what gives it that consistency, but that seems to be the only main difference between their ingredient list and the others.  

These tortillas also cooked differently than the other brands, with the surface of the tortilla sizzling instantly when plopped into the skillet. 

And the flavor?

These were my clear favorite for taste and I thought they did a respectable impression of traditional flour tortillas. 

Note that these aren't truly vegan as they have that milk powder in the ingredient list, but it seems like the trade-off for that is a more savory and familiar flavor. 

So now when I get asked about gluten free flour I'll point peeps to this Cup4Cup option as it was easily my favorite. 

For a pure vegan option, I think either the Bob's Red Mill or King Arthur's will be a good starting point.   I'm tempted to add a bit of Masa Harina to these choices just to give them a slight bump in flavor -- I'll add that to my recipe to-do list 🙂

Okay, I'll put relevant links below if you want to check out any of these gluten-free flours on Amazon.  And feel free to use the comments section below if you have any other brands that you want me to experiment with. 

Cup4Cup Gluten Free Flour
Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour
King Arthur's Gluten Free Measure for Measure Flour
Homemade Flour Tortillas
Home Rendered Lard
Flour Tortillas Made With Bacon Fat

Buen Provecho. 

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