Get ready to make a soft and bendy cassava tortilla that tastes similar to flour tortillas. These tortillas can be used for taco night in lieu of flour or corn tortillas. This post contains affiliate links. Please see my disclosures.
If you live in a gluten-free world (like me), you’ve probably heard of cassava flour.
Cassava flour comes from a cassava plant, an edible starchy tuberous root vegetable that is local to South America and popular in Africa and Asia as well. Cassava is sometimes referred to as yuca.
While tapioca flour, a common ingredient gluten-free flour blends, is only the extracted starch from the cassava root, cassava flour includes the entire ground-up fibrous root.
The flour can be used as a 1-to-1 substitute for wheat flour in most recipes, except for yeast-based recipes like cinnamon rolls and monkey bread, offering a gluten-free, grain-free, and paleo baking flour option.
Cassava flour also offers several health benefits in addition to being gluten-free. It contains several vitamins, including potassium, vitamin C, calcium, vitamin A, folate, magnesium, and iron. It’s also low in fat, cholesterol, and sodium and loaded with resistant starch, which helps to feed the good bacteria in the gut.
There are several brands of cassava flour commercially available today, including Otto’s Cassava Flour and Bob’s Red Mill Cassava Flour.
How to Make Cassava Flour Tortillas
One of the simplest and most delicious recipes you can make using cassava flour are tortillas. These tortillas come out soft and bendy and taste like a flour tortilla vs. a corn tortilla. If you’re craving homemade flour tortillas, try making these cassava flour tortillas instead.
Keep in mind that these tortillas do not taste exactly like flour tortillas. Without gluten, a stretchy protein found in wheat, rye, and barley, it’s near impossible to get an exact match. But they are soft and satisfying nonetheless.
To make homemade cassava flour tortillas, you need four simple ingredients: Cassava flour, Kosher salt, water, and olive oil. That’s it!
You’ll add all the ingredients into a large bowl and mix everything by hand to form a soft dough ball.
If the dough ball is too crumbly, that means you added too much flour. Be sure to weigh the flour to avoid adding too much of it.
You’ll then divide the dough into six balls. I like my tortillas uniform in size, so I weighed each one with my kitchen scale, and each one weighed 32 grams.
Then, you can either roll out each dough ball using a rolling pin or use a tortilla press.
When using a rolling pin, sandwich the dough between two pieces of parchment paper to prevent it from sticking. The dough is very fragile and will break. Please note that a rolling pin will create fraying, uneven edges.
When using a tortilla press, which I highly recommend, place a dough ball between two pieces of parchment paper on your tortilla press. Press down the lever, and voila!, you have a beautifully shaped tortilla.
Again, the tortilla dough is very fragile, so gently peel it from the parchment paper and place it into a hot pan to cook for about one minute on each side.
Use your judgment to check for doneness. You’ll notice the tortilla bubbles in the pan. This means it’s time to flip and cook the other side.
The following picture illustrates the importance of using a tortilla press when possible. I used a tortilla press to create the tortilla on the left and a rolling pin to create the tortilla on the right.
Allow the tortillas to cool for a few minutes on a wire rack. When you handle the tortillas, they should be slightly warm and bendy.
Use the tortillas to enjoy on taco night. They also make great tostadas, and my kids used them to make mini pizzas. The sky’s the limit. Enjoy!
Related Recipes and Articles
Enjoy these recipes, too:
- Easy Gluten-Free Naan (Dairy-Free)
- Chewy Cassava Flour Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Best Gluten-Free Tortillas and Wraps (Brands and Recipes)
Cassava Flour Tortillas (Gluten-Free)
Equipment
- 1 Tortilla press optional (or rolling pin)
- Parchment paper
Ingredients
- 90 grams Cassava flour
- 1/4 tsp Kosher salt
- 1/3 cup warm water
- 2 Tbsp olive oil
Instructions
- Add the flour and salt into a medium-sized bowl, then add the water and olive oil. Mix the ingredients together by hand to form a smooth dough ball.
- Divide the dough into six even portions (32 grams each) and then roll each piece into a ball.
- If using a tortilla press (recommended), place a piece of dough between two small pieces of parchment paper and flatten the dough using the press. A tortilla press will provide an evenly-proportioned and perfectly-shaped tortilla.If using a rolling pin, place each dough ball between two pieces of parchment paper and gently flatten each dough ball into a small circle. Use gentle pressure to avoid breaking the tortilla; the dough is fragile.
- Heat a skillet pan over medium-high heat and gently transfer each tortilla from the parchment paper to the hot pan. Cook each tortilla for about 60 seconds until it bubbles on top. Then, flip the tortilla and cook the other side for about 60 seconds until done.
- Transfer each tortilla to a wire rack to cool. Enjoy warm.
The tortillas were tiny and I had two put two doughs together to make them bigger. The dough was too soft even then to roll.