Tortilla hand-stretch

A hour tortilla can be dehned as a circular chemically leavened hat bread. Flour tortillas are mainly produced from rehned hours, although whole-wheat hour tortillas are gaining in popularity. Generally, tortillas are 2 nun thick and have diameters that vary from 15 to 33 cm. Most wheat tortillas are industrially manufactured by hot-press, die-cut, or hand-stretch procedures (Figure 10.8 Sema-Saldivar et al. 1988, Serna-Saldivar and Rooney 2003). Each operation requires different hour specihcations, dough preparation, and baking conditions, which result in various tortilla characteristics. 

FIGURE 10.8 General flowchart of the hot-press, hand-stretch, or die-cut industrial processes for the production of wheat-flour tortillas. 

Hand-Stretch operations require more labor, sanitation, and maintenance. The preformed and proofed dough balls are forced to pass through a pair of rolls the first pair of roUs presses the dough ball into an ellipsoidal tortilla, while the second, positioned perpendicularly, further compresses it into a semi-round configuration. The preformed tortillas fall onto a hot surface where operators manually stretch into round forms. That is the reason this method is named hand-stretched (Sema-Saldivar et al. 1988, Sema-Saldivar and Rooney 2003). 

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