I have never had much success with tortilla making, generally finding the fragile masa would stick to everything and tear easily. However I was listening to the Cook's Illustrated podcast where they mentioned that cooking a pizza on a stone with silicone-paper makes no difference over doing it on the stone directly. For some reason I had just never thought of cooking it with the silicone-paper on; I'd always frustrated myself trying to separate the pressed tortilla in various ways.
So here's my technique:
- Mix the masa as on the packet; 2 cups to 2-half cups water
- Leave for 20 minutes or so
- Use plastic-wrap on the top of the tortilla press
- Cut a silicone-paper square for the bottom
- Ball the masa and press
- Now the plastic-wrap will peel easily off the top of the uncooked tortilla
- Take the silcone-paper and put the tortilla down on the pan/hotplate
- Give a slight press with the spatula around the edges
- After about 20 seconds, the silicone-paper should peel off the tortilla fairly easily.
- repeat!
I've tried mixing in suet, oil and copha and none of them are worth the extra calories over just plain masa in my opinion and don't help with sticking anyway. Enjoy!