Half and Half Tortillas (Corn + Flour)

Have you noticed these trendy Half and Half Tortillas in your grocery store lately?

While most store-bought tortillas are either corn or flour exclusively, these use both in the same tortilla.  Sound crazy?!  You end up with a more hearty tortilla that still has plenty of corn flavor.  

I've been meaning to experiment with them and finally got around to it this past week, and I'm glad I did!  I thought they were total keepers and I think this recipe offers up a big upgrade compared to store-bought versions. 

 

How To Make Half and Half Tortillas

My starting point for fiddling with these Mitad y Mitad beauties was the original Corn Tortillas recipe:

2 cups Masa Harina
1/2 teaspoon salt
1. 5 cups warm water

Masa Harina is dehydrated corn dough and it's the easiest way to get homemade corn tortillas in the house.  If you're new to Masa Harina you can read more about it here. 

I'm still using Bob's Red Mill for Masa Harina lately, so all the batches in this post were made with this organic option:

But there are other good options for Masa Harina so don't sweat the brand too much.  This post compares Masa Harina brands. 

For Batch #1 I just swapped out a cup of Masa Harina for a cup of all-purpose flour.   

And I chose not to add any fat just to get a sense of my starting point.  Note that corn tortillas are typically made without any fat or lard, while flour tortillas are the opposite and always contain fat.  

So Batch #1 ingredient list looked like this:

1 cup Masa Harina
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup warm water 

Simply add some water to the mixture in the bowl and combine it as much as you can, then dump it on a work surface and add the rest of the water incrementally until it forms a cohesive dough.

 

To flatten the dough balls I pulled out the trusty casserole dish. 

Note:  that's a Ziploc bag with the top cut off surrounding the flattened tortilla. 

Then cooked them in a dry skillet over medium heat for 45-60 seconds per side. 

And the result?

Very promising flavor but the insides were a little gummy, as if they didn't cook all the way through. 

So for Batch #2 I added the fat. 

The original Flour Tortillas recipe uses a single tablespoon of fat per cup of flour, so I went with 2 tablespoons for this batch:

1 cup Masa Harina
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lard
1 cup warm water 

And yes, I used lard!  Lard works wonders in flour tortillas so I wanted to try the real thing in these experiments.  I used this home-rendered lard. 

But keep in mind that you can use other fats to make tortillas at home.  In the past I've used bacon drippings and olive oil and gotten equally good results:

Flour Tortillas Made With Bacon Drippings
Flour Tortillas Made With Olive Oil 

So please don't let the lard turn you off of these Half and Half Tortillas!  I think you'll be able to get creative with the fat and still get a good result. 

Here's how Batch #2 looked after cooking:

That plethora of brown spots is the fat in action and these tortillas were cooked all the way through. 

And the flavor?  It's amazing what a difference some fat can make 🙂  I thought these were awesome and definitely an upgrade to the store-bought half-and-halfs I have in my area.

Next I wanted to experiment with the corn-to-flour ratio. 

Batch #3 looked like this:

1 1/3 cups Masa Harina
2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lard
1 cup warm water

And Batch #4 looked like this:

1 1/2 cups Masa Harina
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lard
1 cup warm water

I wanted to see how much the flavor changes when you increase the amount of Masa Harina, but I have to admit that both of these batches were quite similar in flavor to Batch #2 and they came with a drawback...

As the amount of flour decreased they become more fragile and tougher to roll out. 

At this point I was flattening them with the casserole dish and then trying to get them ultra-thin with a final pass of the rolling pin.    Batch #4 couldn't handle that and would break apart as I tried to peel the plastic away from the flattened tortilla.  In hindsight this makes sense as the gluten of the flour acts as a binding agent and Batch #4 was only 25pct flour.

So I went back to the Batch #2 ratio and tried rolling them out much thinner than I had previously. 

And they came out looking like this:

And they had all the characteristics I had hoped for when starting these experiments: 

• heartiness from the flour
• plenty of corn flavor from the Masa Harina
• thin enough that the tortilla won't dominate the meal
• a hint of savoriness from the fat

I'll take it!

So the final recipe for Batch #2 looked like this:

1 cup Masa Harina
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons lard
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup warm water (plus more to combine)

With a final special note giving you full permission to roll these out ultra thin!  

Okay if you've been wondering about Half and Half Tortillas I hope you try making these at some point.  I was thrilled with the results and learned a bunch in the process.  Awesome. 

Buen Provecho. 

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