Baleadas
A thick flour tortilla folded over refried beans, cream and crumbled cheese. Honduras's breakfast, and thirty minutes.
Photograph credit: Baleada en Copán by Los viajes del Cangrejo · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The tortilla is thicker and softer than a Mexican one and it wants to be, because it is folded rather than rolled and has to hold without cracking. Rest the dough for half an hour so the gluten relaxes and it rolls out without springing back, and cook them on a dry pan just until they puff and blister — a second too long and they go crisp, which is the wrong texture entirely.
Questions About Baleadas
How long does Baleadas take to make?
15 minutes of preparation and 15 minutes of cooking, plus 30 minutes of resting, so allow 1 hour from start to finish. The recipe serves 4.
Photograph credit: Food 宏都拉斯豆泥起司餅, Super Baleada, 拉丁美洲小吃, Fiesta Cafeteria, 台北 (15803858497) by bryan... from Taipei, Taiwan · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
The Method for Baleadas
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Rub the lard (or vegetable shortening) into the flour, baking powder and salt.
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Add the warm water and knead 6 minutes to a soft, smooth dough.
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Cover and rest 30 minutes.
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Heat the oil and fry the onion for 5 minutes, then the garlic and cumin for 1 minute.
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Add the beans with a splash of their liquid and the bean salt and mash to a thick paste over the heat, about 6 minutes.
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Divide the dough into 8 and roll each into a round about 18 cm across and 3 mm thick.
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Cook each on a dry pan over a medium-high heat for 45 seconds a side, until puffed and blistered but still soft.
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Keep them wrapped in a cloth as you go.
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Spread each tortilla with the warm bean paste.
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Add crema, crumbled cheese, avocado and coriander, fold in half and eat at once.
Related guides: Prep, cook and total time · Ingredient substitutions.
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Worth Getting Right
- Thick and soft, not thin and crisp.
- Rest the dough or it fights you.
- Forty-five seconds a side and into a cloth.
If You're Missing Something
- An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
What to Serve With It
Scrambled eggs · Fried plantain · Strong coffee
Leftovers and Storage
Cooked tortillas keep 2 days wrapped. Assemble to order.
Baleadas Nutrition
Per serving, an approximate calculation from the ingredient list. Treat it as a rough guide: part of the energy comes from foods, or weights per item, with no recorded source. How the figures are worked out.
Vegetarian when made with vegetable shortening rather than lard.
Your notes on this recipe
Cooked this? Keep a note for next time
Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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