This San Jose Tortilleria Makes the Best Sonoran Flour Tortillas in the South Bay

In the United States, many Mexican food enthusiasts don’t consider flour tortillas to be as “authentic” as corn tortillas, arguing that they’re not a real part of the cuisine. And it’s true that the mass-produced flour tortillas you find in a Crunchwrap Supreme or packaged at the grocery store tend to compromise everything in favor of shelf stability. They have the same texture and flavor profile as a sheet of paper.

But in the state of Sonora, in northern Mexico, flour tortillas are a centuries-long tradition. These handmade tortillas are both chewy and delicate, and they take on the subtle flavor of the fat used to make them.

When Diana Miranda Benitez moved from Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, to San Jose, she grew frustrated with the poor imitations sold at the local markets. “I couldn’t find a quality flour tortilla in the U.S.,” she says, “and I always had this idea of starting a tortilleria.” At the time, Benitez worked at a Jack in the Box while doing housekeeping gigs on the side. She learned how to make tortillas from her sister-in-law, who also introduced her to a man in the mechanical tortilla press industry. After some hesitation, she purchased an industrial-grade tortilla press from Sonora and started her business — Miranda’s Tortillas — in 2022.

These days, Benitez and her team produce roughly 200 eight-inch tortillas per hour in assembly-line fashion. Benitez dances along to the rhythm of the machine, quickly swapping each newly flattened tortilla with a pre-portioned ball of dough. The raw tortilla is transferred to a hot comal and cooked on both sides until it’s covered in brown spots. Once it puffs up, it’s placed on a wire rack to cool. Miranda’s sells tortillas by the dozen, producing a minimum of 35 packs a day.

Every week, new customers find Benitez through Instagram and word of mouth. Her reputation? That she makes the best flour tortillas in the San Jose area.

Benitez is proud of her tortillas’ texture and their ability to maintain their quality over time. “Flour tortillas don’t get hard, and when you warm them up, it’s as if they’re freshly cooked,” she says. The tortillas are rich from the inclusion of both vegetable shortening and butter. They’re also pliable, so you can use them to make a burrito with a double scoop of rice and beans without worrying about tearing. To truly savor the tortillas’ flavor, gently reheat one on a comal — or in a nonstick pan — and enjoy it with some melted butter and a pinch of salt.

For now, Benitez only sells the one size and style of flour tortilla. But she also provides a direct link to the flavors of Sonora in other ways. She sells ingredients imported from the region like machaca, a dehydrated shredded meat popular in the region. And she keeps a stock of what is considered to be the mother of all chiles — chiltepín. The chiles are worth picking up because they’re rare in California, and they’re great for making a salsa to pair with those flour tortillas.

For Mexican food lovers accustomed to only eating corn tortillas, these homemade flour tortillas offer an entirely different taste experience: They’re larger and chewier, and have an extra richness thanks to the addition of fat. In many ways, flour tortillas in the Bay Area are now following a similar path that corn tortillas did during their renaissance, in the 2010s, when the improving quality of the masa available here made the way for tortillas that taste closer to the ones you find in Mexico.

In the same way, the Bay Area’s emerging artisanal flour tortilla scene is also driven by experimentation and the desire to recreate a taste of home. Xulo — a Berkeley-born pop-up whose flour tortillas are now sold at mainstream grocery stores like Berkeley Bowl— offers tortillas made with traditional manteca (pork fat), but also versions that swap it out for olive oil, duck fat and grass-fed butter. At East Oakland’s Tacos Mama Cuca, the flour tortillas the chef uses to make her Sonoran-style tacos are a tether to her home and family.

Meanwhile, Miranda’s Tortillas appears to be the first business to bring these high-quality Sonoran flour tortillas to San Jose.

Many of Benitez’s customers are Sonoran immigrants who couldn’t find the tortillas they were used to back home. But the buzz around Miranda’s isn’t limited to people looking for a taste of nostalgia. “A lot of people who buy my tortillas are from Sonora,” says Benitez, “but I also get customers who are from other parts of Mexico and even other countries.” Local taquerias have also started buying her tortillas to use in their burritos.

Eventually, Benitez hopes to put a flour tortilla on everyone’s table. “I’m working on getting a trailer,” Benitez says. “In the future, I’d like for my tortillas to be sold in grocery stores.”

Miranda’s Tortillas is open Tuesday–Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Text 408-690-6565 or send a message on Instagram to place an order (and for the exact pickup location in San Jose). Tortillas are $8 per dozen.