Zig Zag Tortillas are made in Kingfield, Maine with Maine ingredients.
Zig Zag Tortillas, for rolling your own.
The story of Zig Zag Tortillas started almost 50 years ago. Rob’s Mom, Annie Mac, would make a big bowl of tortilla balls and leave them in the fridge for Rob and his three siblings to roll out, cook, and slather with butter or peanut butter as an after school snack. As a single working mom of 4, this was an affordable quick way for Annie to satisfy the little Macs.
40 years later, as our business started, we resurrected that old recipe and started working on it, first with King Arthur Flour and lard we rendered from pastured pork. We kept reworking the recipe to use more locally sourced and less labor intensive ingredients. By 2018, we had finally developed the recipe we use today using Maine Grains sifted wheat flour from Skowhegan, Maine and Black Bear Sunflower Oil from sunflowers grown, pressed, and packaged in Blaine, Maine.
The result of all this effort in local sourcing and hand-making that’s not just jibber jabber is a dough with flavor that is so wholesome and unique and a mouth feel that is so satisfying you kind of want to keep it in your mouth and consider it in your teeth. Not candy, not crunch, but a cut and slight chew that makes a fatty a fatty. It blends so seamlessly with other flavors you don’t notice it but it’s so significantly there. And the smell is like nothing else. Have you ever bitten into a burrito and been like, “Dude, what’s that smell?” Not with Zig Zags. Our smell is pure and natural and Mainey. Sniff it for yourself and savor that last bite.
Tortillas were once the bane of our restaurant existence, the task of production time consuming and mandatory. Now with new equipment and employees who are excited for the repetitive and meditative production, we have a new start up company on our hands—Zig Zag Tortillas. ZZT provides tortillas for the restaurant and offers them for sale and wholesale from our restaurant and, soon, at local markets.
Zig Zags—how we roll.
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Maine Grains Sifted Wheat Flour
Maine Grains Sifted Wheat Flour is our base. This all-purpose flour is stone ground and sifted to achieve just the right texture for our soft and pliable tortillas. Maine Grains prioritizes sourcing wheat from Maine Farmers and we source directly from their gristmill in Skowhegan, Maine so our flour is guaranteed to be fresh and nutritious. If you geeks in the crowd want more info, here is a Maine Grains sifted wheat flour spec sheet for some light reading.
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Black Bear Sunflower Oil
This stuff is pure gold with a nutty buttery flavor to our pallets. Our relationship with Tyler Yost at Yost Farms in Blaine, Maine goes back almost as far as our Maine Grains relationship. We will be forever grateful to this business for taking the heavy load of producing fat for holding it all together off our hands. Sunflowers are grown at Yost Farms, processed and cold pressed for our beloved oil that rivals extra virgin olive oil in health benefits. And it’s delivered to our door by the guy who does it all. Kind of amazing and mind-blowing when we think about it. Again, for you geeks out there, here is the Black Bear Sunflower Oil spec sheet.
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Our process
We mix, cut and ball, proof, press, and we package. We’re pretty psyched with the new equipment that makes this process more efficient.
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Our product
In phase one production with the new equipment, we’ll be increasing our production for the restaurant and developing out 6” taco tortillas for resale. Phase 2 will be the 8” and 10” for resale and then on to flavors. Any suggestions? Follow our progress!