Homemade GF Flatbread or Tortilla Recipe
Easy, rolls out thin & doesn't fall apart, tender & flexible
Gluten free vegan homemade flour flatbreads or tortillas: Easy to make. The dough keeps well for up to 3 days in the fridge, handy for quick & filling meals. Cooked flatbreads make great wraps, or quesadillas.
Tapioca flour, arrowroot starch, rice flour, and xanthan gum make the gluten free flatbread dough elastic enough to roll out thin without falling apart. The oil makes it tender and moist. Our no-gum recipe works just as well, but with different ingredients and proportions.
Total prep & cook time: 30 minutes
12 Tortilla Flatbreads, 6 - 7 inch
Nutrition Data Per Serving, 43g: 172 cal, 6g fat, fat cal 54, 25g carb, 201mg sodium, 3g fiber, 1g sugars, 5g protein, low cholesterol, good source Manganese. Estimated glycemic load: 15
Ingredients:
- 1 cup millet flour
- 3/4 cup oat flour (if you must use certified gf oat flour and can't find any, grind gf rolled oats in a spice grinder)
- 1/3 cup tapioca flour
- 1/3 cup chickpea flour (besan)
- 1/3 cup rice flour
- 1/4 cup arrowroot OR organic corn starch (non-gmo)OR potato starch
- 1 tsp xanthan gum (Bobs's Red Mill sells a corn free x. gum)
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 Tbsp olive, coconut or sunflower oil (use any oil you like in these)
- 1 1/3 cup water
- 2 Tbsp lemon juice
- 2 Tbsp gf 'pixie dust' - 2 parts gr flax seed, 1 part gr chia seed, 1 part psyllum husk powder, adapted from Jean Layton's pixie dust recipe. Alternate: use 2 Tbsp gr flax seed
Directions:
- Whisk the pixie dust or gr flax seed into the water and lemon juice.
- Using a whisk or stick blender, mix the oil into the water mixture.
- Combine the dry ingredients, mixing well
- Add the water + lemon juice mixture to the dry ingredients to form a soft dough. This is best done by hand in a large bowl. The mixture will be pretty loose at first. Just keep stirring until it comes together into a ball. This should be a very moist dough. If it seems dry, add another 1 Tbsp of water.
- Turn out on a board or work surface sprinkled with a little fine rice flour. Knead for a couple of minutes, just until the dough forms a smooth ball. Keep in mind the dough should be soft and moist, so don't add too much more flour.
- The flatbread dough benefits from a rest (tightly covered) of 1 - 3 hours before cooking (it ferments a bit and cooks up lighter), but it isn't strictly necessary if you don't want to wait to roll them out
- Heat a heavy fry pan or griddle on medium - med-high heat. It should be hot enough to make the flatbread puff up, but not so hot that it burns.
- Pinch off pieces of dough to make golf-ball sized balls - as many as you want to cook for a meal
- Flatten and roll each ball thin on a floured board (use fine rice flour) to 6 or 7 inch diameter. A tortilla press will also work.
- Lay the rolled dough on the hot pan and cook on one side until it forms bubbles
- Turn, using a spatula or tongs, and cook on the other side for one minute
- Repeat with the remaining small balls of dough. You can roll the next ball while the last one is cooking, or roll several tortillas ahead
- Place the cooked tortillas on a warmed plate covered with a dish towel
- Keep the unused dough in a tightly covered container in the frige. Use within a week.
Video and Recipe Tips:
Mix the dry ingredients in quantity, enough for 3 - 4 batches of dough, then just scoop out 3 level measuring cups whenever you want to make tortillas.
The three essential ingredients in this recipe are xanthan gum, starches and gr flax seed or 'pixie dust', for binding the dough enough to allow rolling it thin without falling apart.
Most xanthan gum is grown on a medium of corn, which is gmo, but Bob's Red Mill makes a gum which is grown on a wheat medium (there is no gluten in the finished product though).
You can make this flatbread recipe oil-free, but it won't be as flexible and will be crispier when cooked.
Exact measurements are important in this recipe, to maintain a good wet dry balance. Use level measuring cups of flour or level tsp or Tbsp of other ingredients. Run the back of a knife blade across the measuring cup to level it.
I like oat flour for flatbread because it's soft and sticky,
but it's hard to find certified gluten free, which is important if you have CD. Sorghum flour is easy to find, and a reasonable sub for oat flour.
Teff, buckwheat, amaranth and quinoa flour are a few other good gluten free flour choices for flatbread, in place of the millet flour. You might need a Tbsp or 2 more or less water, as gf flours vary in how much moisture they soak up.
Most rice flours are gritty. We found one brand of superfine brown rice flour, but it's not widely available. You can buy it at Authentic Foods Gluten Free Supermarket. It's expensive and the shipping is high, but it might be worth it, for the mild, sweet flavor of rice flour - if not for this recipe, then maybe for desserts. We found a super fine white rice flour in the local supermarket in the Asian foods section - Mochiko brand sweet rice flour. That works great, especially for rolling out the flatbreads, but it's white rice.
We've also found gf flours in Indian grocery stores: millet, amaranth, and rice flour for example - they're good, and much cheaper.
Recipe Comments:
I absolutely LOVE this website; nicely written, totally informative. These flatbreads are a real hit! I've been Gluten Free for at least 15 years. I love the idea that you can transform vegetarian recipes into real WINNERS! Thank you SO MUCH! - Pat McC.
Question: Do I need to add this to the recipe? 2 Tbsp gf 'pixie dust' - 2 parts gr flax seed, 1 part gr chia seed, 1 part psyllum husk powder. Alternate: use 2 Tbsp gr flax seed. For some reason I don't do well with chia seeds or flax seed. Carolina A.
Answer: If chia and flax seeds don't agree with you, then just use another tsp of xanthan gum along with 1 tsp psyllum husk powder OR 1 Tbsp psyllum flakes if you can get them. Or just skip those additions if you'd rather. The recipe will still work - Judith KIngsbury
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