In the last week or so I have already remade two of the items I have made in the recent past. On Thursday, we had some leftover chicken and we weren't sure what to do with it. We resorted to a favorite meal around our house...a buffalo chicken wrap. I didn't have time to make tortillas on Wednesday and wasn't interested in buying any from the store, so we planned on putting all the fixings on hamburger buns we have in the freezer.
On Thursday, we had someone coming over to look at some things around the house, so I needed to get home a bit early. I got home in plenty of time to make some tortillas, even though my husband said I didn't need to go to the trouble. Now I was in the mood for wraps and wanted to take advantage of the few extra minutes I had that evening.
I made the white whole wheat tortillas from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain baking book, just like last time. I measured out the dough this time so that I could split it evenly into 10 tortillas without simply guessing on the size. I believe that it ended up being just under 1 1/2 ounces per tortilla. Last time I guess on the sizes and ended up with 14 rather than the suggested 10 to 12, resulting in smaller tortillas than I would have liked. I wasn't going to repeat that mistake.
I rolled out the dough like before and made circles that looked pretty good on the dough mat. That is, until I went to pick them up and place them on the hot grill pan. Then they stretched out a bit more than I would have liked and my husband had to make a comment on the non-round shape of my tortillas. I got a bit better with each one, I just started making them more oblong and picking them up so that the area where they stretched would be on the shorter sides to make them a little bit more round. It will still take some more practice. Then again, the easier solution may be to just buy a tortilla press. I saw online that target.com sells them, but mentions that it is unavailable in the stores. I haven't had a chance to look in the various stores around here for one yet. Hopefully that will make life a lot easier, except for the fact I would have one more gadget that I need to find a place to store in my kitchen!
My other repeat was the pecan pie. My husband's sister and brother in law came by for a short visit on Friday night to Saturday morning (more on that a bit later) and they had requested a pecan pie. I made the dough Wednesday night, rolled it out Thursday morning and let it rest in the fridge during the day before completing the pie Thursday night.
All the dough steps felt a lot better than last time. Having just the one trial run was enough for me to feel a lot more comfortable working with pie dough. I think I still handled the dough a little more than I should, but I did much better than last time. And I am sure I will get a bit better next time. I love apple pie, so I will need to make one of those soon.
The reviews on the pie were great! My brother in law was very pleased with the pie and asked me if I was trying to be like Betty Crocker now. I said it was something like that. He liked that the pecans were still a bit crunchy and hadn't gotten soggy and loved the filling, which is his favorite part. I didn't try a piece of the pie, since I had made it for them, but my husband had a small slice. I tried to get him to compare it to the first pie, but of course he didn't want to say too much. He said he liked this one, but he also liked the first one, as well. Hopefully the crust was a bit more tender than last time.
I had a little bit of dough left over, so I rolled it out and cut it into pieces using a pizza cutter. I transferred the pieces to a baking sheet and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. I put the chips in a 350F oven and cooked them for a few minutes. Unfortunately, I wasn't paying attention to the time. I just kept checking on them and guessed when it was done. They were a nice little treat, and I felt good about using the scraps rather than simply tossing them. I hate throwing things away that I could make use of.
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