It's flour, all the way, for tortilla artist Joe Bravo. He tells Agustin Gurza that he uses flour tortillas from Tortilleria San Marcos on 1st Street in Boyle Heights for his famous tortilla paintings. Gurza examines the particulars:
The recipe is the same for standard tortillas, but Bravo's work calls for special settings and manual operation of the presses to create his jumbo-sized canvas, 28 inches in diameter.
The process took some experimentation.
"If it's pressed too much, the tortilla just blows up all over the press," says Andres Garcia, son of the tortilla factory's founders. "We gradually modified the settings, and eventually we got it right."
Bravo's current show at the Mexican Cultural Institute on Olvera Street is up through April 22. His work is getting featured on the Food Network next week. * Previously, "The tortilla revolt?"