Talk:Flour tortilla

Merge with Corn tortilla
Most of the material at Corn tortilla is not really specific to corn tortillas but applies equally to wheat tortillas. The article Tortilla also deals with corn tortillas. I think it is better to have one solid article that handles both types. --Lambiam 20:27, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.230.201.87 (talk) 07:09, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. --Opus88888 (talk) 18:50, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree 109.175.228.75 (talk) 20:53, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I disagree, but mostly with the Central American tortillas. Those are quite different in form, and are not necessarily are made with corn. Sometimes in El Salvador, tortillas are made with rice flour or sorghum, for instance. These should be mentioned in the main tortilla article Ll1324 (talk) 23:33, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

"466 years of flour tortilla history in 2008"
Bad section title. Really bad. Extremely awkward syntax. -- 70.57.75.245 (talk) 15:38, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

We've a contradiction in market value

 * (Section) Tortillas today:

It is estimated, by the Tortilla Industry Association (TIA), that in the U.S. alone, the tortilla industry ... has become a $6 billion a year industry.


 * (Section) Tortilla facts:

Tortilla Industry Association (TIA) estimates the retail tortilla category is a $2.12 billion market in the U.S.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.52.76.102 (talk) 12:57, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Mexico-centric; needs to reflect a worldwide view
This article focuses almost exclusively on the Mexican and Central American tortilla, which is not reflective of worldwide use. There's almost nothing about the unrelated omelette-like dish called "tortilla" in most Spanish-speaking countries (Spain, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and South America). If you're knowledgeable about Spanish cooking, please expand to include more information about these "tortillas" too. Kwertii (talk) 02:10, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I just noticed that it has:

For Spanish omelette, see Tortilla de patatas. For Mexican and Central American corn tortilla, see Corn tortilla. For Mexican flour tortilla, see Flour tortilla. For South American tortilla, see Sopaipilla.
 * Do we really need so many separate articles? Can these be merged in some way? Kwertii (talk) 02:13, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the generic tortilla page should become a disambig. Opinions?


 * Funny, I was thinking kinda the opposite. I mean, I do think it's interesting that tortilla has so many different meanings in Spanish, but since this is English wikipedia, I think the article should focus more on what tortilla means in English, which, as far as I know, is a piece of flat bread for wrapping things in. Emika22 (talk) 16:08, 4 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Precisely. I've fixed this long-accumulating train wreck by merging flour tortilla back here and splitting the trivia over the generic Spanish term to tortilla (egg-based dish). Other types of tortilla already have their own articles. The flour tortilla belongs at tortilla as that is the common name used for it across most cultures (ignoring that "tortilla" happens to be a generic word in Spanish). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:15, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Name of the article
If this article is just about wheat tortillas, it should be renamed accordingly, and Tortilla should be a damb page. --Jotamar (talk) 15:37, 25 April 2014 (UTC) There is a tortilla disambiguation page, but I agree that this page should be renamed to "flour tortilla". Geene69 (talk) 11:13, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Agree. Tortilla should go straight to corn tortilla if anything. Flour tortillas are only from the northern border region of Mexico, which admittedly extends all the way to Canada now. Lg king (talk) 04:24, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree. This article should be renamed as "wheat torilla" or "flour tortilla". --Opus88888 (talk) 21:59, 4 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I totally agree! It's been a long time since I changed an article name and I've forgotten how to go about it.  I'll see what I can do...  Gandydancer (talk) 17:10, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Use of lime (or lye) in making tortillas
After running into a discussion in the NY Times where this article was quoted, I did some looking around. Under the heading "Central America" there is a paragraph that includes "...maize is soaked in a mixture of water and lime (or lye)..." that was argued to be wrong. After searching, everything I come across mentions LIME (calcium oxide) is used in making tortillas. I cannot find anyone who mentions that LYE (sodium hydroxide) is used. However, I did find references to lye being used in the creation of homily and grits from corn kernels. Due to this I do not think that "(or lye)" should be included in this paragraph if it, in fact, is not used. However, I am no tortilla expert. 3dSurveyor (talk) 23:59, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Lime is more traditional than lye, but it's common to use lye in place of lime since the function is the same. Graxwell (talk) 02:12, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Amongst
"The wheat flour tortilla is probably best known as the tortilla and it is used to make burritos, amongst other things. " AMONGST - really? Isn't that considered "whimsically archaic"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.115.208.61 (talk • contribs)
 * No, it's British. Thanks for commenting. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 17:39, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Nonsense about Jews considering corn as non-kosher
As an observant and kosher-keeping Jew myself, I can say without an inkling of a doubt that "innovation by exiled Sephardi Jews who considered corn meal as non-kosher and used wheat brought from Europe" is absolute nonsense. There is nothing non-kosher about corn and never ever did Jews consider corn non-kosher. Actually there are no kosher restrictions whatsoever for plant-based foods (fruit, vegetables, grains). The source is a poorly researched article in the San Antonio Express News. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dc3736 (talk • contribs) 07:06, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not opposed to the apparent removal of the line, but in case it comes back up, I felt it worth responding to this, as there are indeed Jews who don't — or didn't — consider corn kosher in the context of Passover. Corn and other products, such as beans and rice, are kitniyot, and have been considered not kosher for Passover, the idea being that these "swell" when cooked.  Some considered this too close to leavening, so hence the ban.  It has (largely?) been undone recently, but it's not nonsense. ~  Amory  (u • t • c) 21:55, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, it sounds like that source confused kosher generally with kosher for Passover (see chametz and kitniyot). In college, I bought some potato vodka for a Jewish friend during Passover. --BDD (talk) 14:16, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

History of the Corn Tortilla
Why is there a section solely on the history of the corn tortilla on the wheat tortilla page? This seems out of place. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:F220:415:253:0:0:0:14E (talk) 18:32, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Definitely out of place, I've removed it. --IamNotU (talk) 13:42, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Changing title from "Wheat tortilla" to "Flour tortilla"
I noticed that someone changed a link in an article from "wheat tortilla" to "flour tortilla". I decided to look into it...

Although the name "wheat tortilla" is not uncommon, "flour tortilla" is far more common according to a Google web and books search, Google Ngrams, a significant majority of usage in the New York Times, etc. Also, "wheat" is in some places a synonym for "whole wheat", and many of the search results for "wheat tortilla" are actually "whole wheat tortilla".

Following the 2016 discussion above in, the article was moved by from "Tortilla" to "Wheat tortilla". However, there hadn't really been a discussion or consensus about whether to use "wheat" or "flour"; in talking about it, two people used the former term, two the latter, and one said "either".

If there are no objections, I'll move the article to "flour tortilla", in accordance with WP:COMMONNAME. --IamNotU (talk) 16:21, 28 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Since it's been about two months and there were no objections, I tried to move the article to Flour tortilla, but there's an existing older version that now redirects here, so I've listed it at Requested moves/Technical requests. --IamNotU (talk) 14:13, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Claim of origin
Currently the entry states that "The wheat flour tortilla was originally derived from the corn tortilla" and cites a 2006 cookbook as the source for this claim ("Dishes from the Wild Horse Desert: Norteo Cooking of South Texas, by Melissa Guerra").

Is that a good enough source for a claim that seems unproven and disputed? Especially given this book was the source for the now removed claim that flour tortillas were brought to Mexico by Jews?

Here's an article looking at other possible origin stories:

https://andreaaliseda.substack.com/p/tortilla-de-harina-a-moon-of-mystery

Seems like 16th century Spanish Catholics and/or ancient Persians were the more likely originators of the flour tortilla - and though the truth is more likely that no one will ever know, "derivation of corn" is surely several places down the list of possibilities. Rubsley (talk) 21:58, 23 April 2024 (UTC)