Making healthful tortillas (or other flatbread)

[Jebus]

In my quest of achieving the optimal diet (based on beans, lentils, and veggies) I came up with the idea of eating these in bread wraps. It makes it tastier and much easier to eat. However, after researching the nutrition on these commercial wraps it turns out most of them are quite unhealthful.

I am now trying to learn how to make my own. I am trying to make sense of the flour options. Some articles state that whole meal flour is only slightly better for you then regular white flour but when comparing the flour options (chickpea flour, masa etc.) wholemeal flour seems to come out on top.

My questions are:
Do you consider wholemeal flour healthful or harmful?

Have any of you looked into this and found a more healthful alternative than whole meal flour?

I read that many commercial wholemeal flour brands cheat in their production "The FDA says that a grain-containing product labeled “100-percent whole-grain” must be made of germ, endosperm, and bran in proportions that equal those of intact grains. Food manufactuers exploit this loophole and often process grain as white flour, then add the germ and bran back in. Believe it or not, this still counts as “whole-grain” flour." Irs there any way of telling by the look of the flour?

[brimstoneSalad]

You can buy wheat and other grains fresh, and grind them yourself. Not actually very difficult, but you'll need to invest in a good machine to do it. Wheat will go bad, so if storing for a long time make sure to take that into consideration and research storage.

A coffee grinder will make pretty quick work of grains, but it's small so it's tedious to make many batches. I typically grind my own oat flour from rolled oats, because oat flour is just ridiculously expensive and rolled oats are very cheap.

Grinding yourself, you can also make a more coarse flour, which may be superior because it has a lower glycemic index. (I think Greger talked about this a bit).

What some people do (and this IS a lot of work) is to sprout the grains first, then grind them up in a food processor. You can get a dry flour if you dehydrate them first. That's a bit over the top, and involves a lot of steps. You could even go all out and sprout them, then ferment them, then dry them, then grind them. It's hard to imagine going through that much trouble.

I'm satisfied with commercial whole wheat flour for the time being. Really good flour is just not shelf stable, and wouldn't be affordable, so you have to DIY.

Food manufactuers exploit this loophole and often process grain as white flour, then add the germ and bran back in.

I don't think that's really a problem. Refined flour is inferior because they removed the good stuff. If they add it back in, that's probably more or less the same.

I'd love to have healthier wraps, but the trouble to do it probably isn't worth it. Statistically maybe I'll live a week longer, but spend several months (added up) of my life making flour and wraps? There's a point of diminishing returns.

[DarlBundren]

Read the label. True whole grain bread should fit the 5 carbs to 1 fiber rule. Or at least, come close to that. Also make sure there is no added sugar or oil in it.

[brimstoneSalad]

Read the label. True whole grain bread should fit the 5 carbs to 1 fiber rule. Or at least, come close to that. Also make sure there is no added sugar or oil in it.

Oil could just be a processing aid, like to keep it from sticking. If it's low on the ingredients list and the total fat is low, whatever oil probably isn't in meaningful quantities. It's not fair to be too strict with any commercial food.
There are certain practical necessities in manufacturing that are hard to avoid.

Another option to tortillas is tofu sheets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bai_ye
The translation is incorrect on wikipedia. It means "100 pages" tofu, that is tofu that is pressed very thin. Tofu skin is something different and not useful as a tortilla.
Wikipedia has a correct article on that here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu_skin) delicious, but not really useful as a wrap since it's very fragile (although could work as sort of a springroll).

[Jebus]

Another option to tortillas is tofu sheets.

This is interesting but not available to buy where I live and I couldn't find instructions on how to make them. Let me know if you have a recipe.

[brimstoneSalad]

This is interesting but not available to buy where I live and I couldn't find instructions on how to make them. Let me know if you have a recipe.

It's a thin piece of tofu pressed for a long time under significant pressure.
You'd want to start by making regular tofu first, I think. I don't think it would be easy to make, though, since it would take quite a rig to do it reliably.

This is how tofu skin is made, which you can make by yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9vjijq2uOU

However, it's not so great for a wrap, since as I said it's rather fragile. If you don't have an asian market where you can buy these things, I'd stick with tortillas.

[DarlBundren]

I just said that that should be the kind of bread to buy. Of course, if there is no other choice, then olive oil is better than soy oil, soy oil is better than palm oil etc. Tortilla usually have oil in them, to be honest. However, I regularly find whole-grain bread without added oils or sugar.