This recipe is another family favorite that is made at least once a week in our house. If you’re someone who loves baking sourdough bread, then you’re familiar with the term “discard.” Sourdough discard refers to the portion of your starter that you remove and discard before feeding it to keep it active. It can feel like a waste to throw away a perfectly good starter, so let’s put it to good use!

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Why Make Your Own Tortillas

While store-bought tortillas can be convenient, there are plenty of reasons to make your own.

• You have control over the quality of the ingredients.
• It puts your discard to good use instead of throwing it away.
• You can customize them to your liking, whether that’s by using different flours or adding in extra ingredients like herbs or spices.
• Homemade tortillas taste fresher and more flavorful than store-bought ones. 

The Process

Making sourdough discard tortillas is a fairly straightforward process. You’ll start by combining your sourdough discard and letting it autolyze for 15 minutes. An autolyze is simply allowing the flour to fully hydrate and the glutens begin to develop. Next, you will knead the dough for 5 minutes followed by letting it rest for a half hour (or up to a few hours). 

Once the dough has rested, you’ll divide it into balls and roll each ball out into a thin tortilla. It’s not a big deal if your tortillas are perfectly round, mine usually are not. The cooking process goes very quickly! They only need to cook for 60-90 seconds on the first side and 30 seconds on the second. 

You can cook your tortillas on a griddle or in a cast iron, flipping them once they start to puff up and develop brown spots. The key to getting those good bubbles is a HOT skillet. These pans are my all-time favorite cookware for everything from sourdough tortillas to steaks. They are heirloom pieces, handcrafted and designed to be passed down through generations!

Customizations

There are a few ways to really make this recipe your own.

• Flour: You can use pretty much any flour you’d like here. I typically use all-purpose but whole wheat works great as well if you want to add a bit more nutrition.
• Volume: I made this recipe for 100 grams of sourdough discard because that is the typical size of my discards. You can easily half, double, or triple this recipe if you have more discard to use up. 
• Size: You can make these in any size you’d like depending on how you plan to use them. This recipe makes 4 average-sized tortillas. You could make 6 tortillas the size of a typical corn tortilla or 3 larger burrito-sized tortillas if you have a large enough skillet or griddle.
• Flavors: You can add any additional herbs and spices you’d like to make these more savory. Garlic or onion powder, Italian seasoning, and even turmeric are favorites in our house. Adding a bit of honey and cinnamon can transform them into a sweet treat as well.
• Thickness: Depending on how you would like to enjoy them, you can choose to roll them out a bit thicker to be used as naan or flatbread.

I write my Sourdough recipes in grams for accuracy and consistency. This is the scale that I have used almost daily for years and it has worked great. If you do not have a kitchen scale, see my metric conversion chart.