Flour tortillas scale by weight: flour, water, lard, salt and baking powder as percentages of the dough. Mix in a spiral mixer, divide the dough into balls by weight, rest them, press and cook them on a press and griddle oven instead of rolling by hand, and cool every tortilla before bagging, or the bags fog and the tortillas mold. Done this way, a tortilla maker that pressed by hand makes about 360 packs in a day, and the cost of a pack of 10 falls from $3.15 to $1.18. Below is the recipe at three sizes, the steps, the loss, what a pack costs at each size, and a free scaling calculator.
The short version
- Write the dough as percentages by weight.
- Mix in a spiral mixer, 80 pounds of dough at a time.
- Divide by weight so every tortilla is the same size.
- Press and cook on a press and griddle oven.
- Cool fully before bagging, or they mold.
- Labor is most of a handmade pack's cost; the press cuts it most.
- TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield. More below.
The recipe, by percentage
Saguaro Salsa Co., the made-up salsa and tortilla maker in Tucson, Arizona, I use in these examples, rolled and griddled 10 pounds of dough at a time until its grocers wanted more packs than hands could make. Its dough, weighed:
| Ingredient | % of the mix | Kitchen batch, 10 lb | One batch, 80 lb | The run, 400 lb | Cost a lb, bought in bulk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flour | 62% | 6.20 lb | 49.6 lb | 248.0 lb | $0.40 |
| Water | 26% | 2.60 lb | 20.8 lb | 104.0 lb | $0.00 |
| Lard | 9% | 0.90 lb | 7.20 lb | 36.0 lb | $1.60 |
| Salt | 1.5% | 0.15 lb | 1.20 lb | 6.00 lb | $0.30 |
| Baking powder | 1.5% | 0.15 lb | 1.20 lb | 6.00 lb | $2.00 |
| The whole mix | 100% | 10 lb | 80 lb | 400 lb |
The 400 pounds of dough cost $170.60 in ingredients; flour is most of the cost and lard most of the rest. What the packs earn is in is selling tortillas profitable.
The steps, at 400 pounds
- Mix. Flour, salt and baking powder, then lard, then warm water, in the spiral mixer to a smooth dough.
- Divide by weight. Balls of the same weight on a divider or a scale.
- Rest. Covered, so the dough relaxes and presses thin without springing back.
- Press and cook. Through the press and the griddle oven, turned once.
- Cool. On racks, spread out, until fully cool.
- Count and bag. Ten to a bag, sealed.
- Label and date. Each pack with its lot and best-by date.
The run takes two people about five hours with the press.
What a pack of 10 costs at each size
| Per pack of 10 | Kitchen batch, 10 lb | Bulk run, 400 lb |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients | $0.95 (grocery prices) | $0.47 (bought in bulk) |
| Packaging | $0.20 | $0.15 |
| Labor at $20 an hour | $2.00 (6 min a pack of 10) | $0.56 (1.7 min a pack of 10) |
| Cost of a pack of 10 | $3.15 | $1.18 |
Flour by the 50-pound bag and lard by the pail cut the ingredients in half, and the labor falls from 6 minutes a pack to under 2 with the press. Bags and labels are in how to package tortillas for sale, and the year in tortilla business plan.
Cooling at scale
A dozen tortillas cool on a towel; 3,600 come off the oven faster than they can be counted. Racks with room between the tortillas, and a rule that nothing is bagged warm, keep a bulk run's packs from fogging and molding before their date.
Get the calculator
Download the tortilla scaling calculator. Two sheets: scale the recipe, where you type each ingredient's percentage and cost a pound and the raw mix you want, and each ingredient's weight for the run fills in, with the mixes, what comes out after the cook and trim loss, the pack of 10s it fills and the cost of each pack of 10; and weigh the loss, where what went in and came out over a few batches gives your average cook and trim loss. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
Flour and corn tortillas, a run every day, lard from pails opened on different days, and a grocer asking about one moldy pack. A sheet can say how much flour a run needs, but not which bag went into which packs.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield.
The recipe in the units you use. A recipe holds each ingredient by weight, with flour bought by the 50-pound bag and used by the pound, and the cost of every pack comes from what you paid. "What could I make right now" says how many runs the flour and lard on the shelf allow.
Each run a batch. A run takes its ingredients off stock, records the lots of flour and lard it used, and gets a lot of its own for the packs, with how much came out good, how much was rejected and the labor minutes.
Yield checked from history. From your own batch history, TaroStack says whether a recipe yields what it claims and which ingredient's quantity is off, so a cook and trim loss that creeps up shows in the numbers. A moldy batch is an adjustment with its reason, spoiled, and shows in the waste report.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients for Tuesday's run | Multiply, then check the shelf | What could I make right now |
| Which flour went into a run | Not written down | Lots recorded on the batch |
| The real cook and trim loss | Weighed now and then | Good and rejected on every batch |
| Packs past their date | Thrown out, forgotten | Adjustment with a reason |
Recipes, batches, lots and yield are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.