breadflatbreadmexican-cuisinetortilla
If you cook flatbreads/tortillas they should ideally inflate on the griddle.
What might cause tortilla or flat breads to break or crack in places some time during the inflation process, letting out steam and thereby preventing a full inflation?
Is it insufficient development of gluten (not enough kneading)? Or is the dough too dry? Wrong heat? What might cause this issue?
Depending on where you are, the word tortilla can mean a few different things. In Mexico it refers to a flatbread made of either wheat or corn and a few other ingredients. These flatbreads tend to come in standard sizes in the United States at least, one of which might be labeled the "burrito" size.
A burrito is one use for a tortilla. A burrito consists of a wheat flour tortilla wrapped around a filling. Often the filling might include beans, cooked meat, rice, and perhaps vegetables.
Folding a burrito is serious business. Get it wrong and you'll end up dumping most of the contents all over the place and look like a burrito noob. Get it right and your hands and plate will be perfectly clean, and you'll no longer be hungry. Beware: publicly flaunting these skills might lead to people wanting you to fold their burritos for them.
First off: make sure your tortilla is ready to be folded. A cold or dried out tortilla is likely to crack or split. Use a warm and moist tortilla.
Second: don't overfill the tortilla. If you have small tortillas don't try to make a giant burrito and expect that to work.
Now that we have the basics out of the way let's get to folding. See the flash animation at Chow.com (which I've converted into an image here):
Place the contents in the approximately center of your partially folded tortilla. Leave plenty of room on the ends otherwise you'll most surely have food spilling out once it's folded up. Hold the filled tortilla so the weight of the filling pulls it tight. If your burrito busts through now, it will certainly burst later. If not, proceed to step 2.
Fold one end towards the center.
Fold the other end over.
Roll the bottom (the end nearest you) up towards the top. This isn't the intuitive way, but it's the right way. Make sure not to let the food squeeze out. I hold it with my fingers at the crease where the bottom edge that's been folded up meets the food.
Keep rolling it up.
Om nom nom.
Best Answer
Only some flatbread recipes are expected to "fully inflate" during cooking. Mexican flour tortillas, in particular, will have bubbles up to around 2", but shouldn't puff up into a balloon. So "what might cause it" is you doing things correctly.
In order to fully inflate, the inside of the flatbread needs to be weak enough when the outside gels and dries, such that the force of the steam can rip the inner crumb but not the outer crust. That means the hydration can't be too low, the flatbread can't be too thin, and the temperature can't be too low. Full inflation is unlikely to occur when cooking on a griddle (with no radiant heat from above) since the top won't be cooked. You might be able to get a griddle flatbread to inflate by cooking for a short period at a very high heat on the first side and then flipping, but I haven't tried this.