Flour tortillas are made in nine steps: weigh the flour, fat, salt, baking powder and warm water; mix to a soft dough; rest it; divide it into balls of the same weight; rest the balls; press or roll them flat; cook them on a hot griddle; cool them before they're bagged; then count, bag, label and code. Two steps decide whether a pack of tortillas is good on day three. Dividing by weight, not by eye, keeps every tortilla the same size, so a pack of ten is a pack of ten. And cooling: tortillas bagged warm trap steam, the bag fogs, and the moisture brings mold days early. They should be at room temperature before they go in the bag. Masa tortillas, from nixtamalized corn, follow the same pattern from the dough on. In the example below, a Tucson maker runs 124 packs of flour tortillas for two grocers and its market table.
The short version
- Nine steps: weigh, mix, rest, divide, rest, press, cook, cool, bag and code.
- Weigh the dough balls: same weight, same size, honest packs.
- Rest the dough so it presses without springing back.
- Cook on a hot griddle, both sides, until puffed and spotted.
- Cool to room temperature before bagging, or the bags fog and mold comes early.
- Count, bag, label and put the lot and best-by on each pack.
- TaroStack records each batch with its yield, its lot and its flour lot. More below.
The nine steps
| Step | What happens | What to record |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Weigh | Flour, fat, salt, baking powder, warm water by the recipe | Weights, ingredient lots |
| 2. Mix | Mixed to a soft, smooth dough | Dough temperature |
| 3. Rest | Covered, to relax the gluten | Time |
| 4. Divide | Cut into balls by weight | Ball weight |
| 5. Rest again | Balls covered for a short rest | Time |
| 6. Press | Hot press or rolled flat | Diameter |
| 7. Cook | On a griddle, both sides | Griddle temperature |
| 8. Cool | On racks, to room temperature | Time to cool |
| 9. Bag and code | Counted into tens, bagged, labeled, lot and best-by | Packs, lot, best-by |
The tortilla business's numbers are in tortilla business plan, and the bags in how to package tortillas for sale.
An example: 124 packs for two grocers
Saguaro Salsa Co., a made-up salsa, hot sauce and tortilla maker in Tucson, Arizona, sells flour tortillas in packs of ten. One Wednesday:
| Step | What happened |
|---|---|
| Weigh | 36 kg flour, lot FL-1009; 7.2 kg lard; 0.7 kg salt; 0.5 kg baking powder; 19.8 kg warm water |
| Mix and rest | 8 minutes in the mixer, dough at 82°F, rested 30 minutes |
| Divide | 1,280 balls at 50 g |
| Press and cook | 8-inch press, griddle at 450°F, about 30 seconds a side |
| Cool | Racks, 20 minutes to room temperature |
| Bag and code | 124 packs of 10, lot TO-1016, best by Oct 23; 40 seconds pulled for torn or burned |
The 64 kg of dough made 1,280 balls at 50 g; 1,240 cooked up good, 124 packs, and the 40 seconds go to the restaurant chips. The two grocers take 50 packs each, and 24 go to Saturday's market. What a pack costs and what each channel pays is in markup percentage formula.
Get the run sheet
Download the tortilla production run sheet. Two sheets: a blank run sheet to print for each batch, with the nine steps, the check at each and its target, and spaces for the actual reading, the time and initials; and the same run filled in from the example. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
One run fits on a sheet. Tortillas made three days a week, two grocers with standing orders and seconds turned into chips need yields, lots and dates kept across all of them.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack records each batch with its yield, its lot and its ingredient lots.
Batches from the recipe. A batch of tortillas takes flour, lard and bags off stock by the recipe, and records what it made against what the recipe expected.
Sub-recipes and seconds. The dough can be a sub-recipe of its own, and torn tortillas can go into a batch of chips, so nothing is counted twice or lost.
Lots and where they went. Each pack gets the batch's lot and best-by, and each grocer's order records the lots it got.
| The job | Clipboard | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Packs made against packs expected | Counted, maybe | Yield on the batch |
| Seconds turned into chips | Not recorded | A chips batch that uses them |
| Which flour went into a batch | Written, maybe | Lots on the batch |
| Which grocer got a lot | Invoices | Lots on the order |
Recipes, batches, lots and recalls 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.