As just about everyone knows, tortillas are a cornerstone of Mexican cuisine. Mexico is an extremely large country, though, and the fact is that many dishes traditionally served in one region would never be found in another. While many people are aware, for example, that the prized mole sauce of Puebla is something special and particular to that area, the fact that tortillas vary greatly across the length and breadth of Mexico is less well known. Providers of wholesale tortillas in New Jersey, though, make it easy for their clients to take advantage of even this form of the variety so typical of Mexican cuisine.
For thousands of years, tortillas eaten in what is now Mexico were made from one simple ingredient. When corn is treated with an alkaline substance like lime or lye, proteins within it break down in ways that make them more digestible and nutritious when eaten. Corn that is “nixtamalized” in this way and then ground into a dough can be pressed into flat breads and cooked on any hot, flat surface, producing the traditional tortillas of Mexico.
Throughout much of Mexico today, corn tortillas about the size of an average hand are the norm, with food of this kind still accounting for over half the daily calories of many people in a fair number of places. Smaller ones are fairly common, as well, though, with suppliers of Wholesale Tortillas in New Jersey also often stocking the compact corn discs less than three inches across that are typical of the tacos sold in places like Mexico City.
The real variation to be seen, though, comes with another kind of tortilla entirely. While corn tortillas are the norm throughout most of Mexico, the northern parts of the country became major producers of wheat upon the arrival of Spanish missionaries starting in the seventeenth century. Visit us online and it will be seen that there is a tremendous variety among the wheat-flour tortillas traditionally made and eaten in those places. From the thick, relatively small wheat tortillas that are often eaten today with Tex-Mex fajitas to the thin tortillas of Sonora that can be as long as the maker’s arm, flour tortillas vary even more than those formed from corn.
