So, homemade flour tortillas. For the longest time I thought tortilla recipes were the devil. I couldn’t get a single one right. Meaning, I produced amazing-tasting tortillas but they were ALWAYS hard & brittle 2 minutes after they came off my comal (griddle). Who knew that a measly 5-ingredient recipe could be so combative! After some research and enough practice I have become comfortable enough to give you a recipe and some tips! Come in closer, I’m going to tell you this little secret...if you struggle with the same problems I had, it’s most likely not your recipe, it’s the execution.
First let’s prepare the dough. I have found that weight is most precise. I invested $10 on a small digital kitchen scale. Recipe measurements of cups, tbsp, tsp will be the closest approximations I coils get without going over the weighted amount. Also, these measurements were pretty damn close, only under by .5-1g or 4ml for the liquid. So you should still be able to create a perfect tortilla...2 dozen from this recipe to be exact!
Gather ingredients:
315g (2 1/2 C) all-purpose flour plus 2 more cups for rolling & work surface
6g (1 Tbsp) baking powder
8g (1 Tbsp 1 tsp) salt
220ml (1 C) warm (125°F) water or milk
115g (2/3 C) melted fat (lard, butter, shortening)
Mix together all dry ingredients in a medium/large mixing bowl.
Stir in water/milk. Milk is said to bring a better texture and increased richness. My preference is water, the flavor is consistent to what I grew up with. Combine completely.
Slowly add the melted fat, my preference is lard; pouring slowly with one hand, stirring with the other— You could use a hand or stand mixer with a dough hook for steps 2 & 3 but, I usually just end up using my hands once the flour absorbs most of the liquids anyways, so there really isn’t a need.
Knead until smooth. Turn out onto (lightly floured) workbench if you want. It does make kneading easier. You’re only going to knead for a couple of minutes, about four. If you can’t get your dough to come together or it’s too flaky read “How to fix my dough” at the end of the recipe.
So, your dough is done. Slightly wet, doesn’t stick too much to your hands, and smooth and svelte when you roll it into a ball. If your dough isn’t like this scroll down to “How to fix my dough”. Since you’re ready to get this started, (if you haven’t already) turn out your dough onto a clean, lightly-floured work surface, knead a couple more times & begin making dough balls, you should get at least 24. They’ll be about the size of a golf ball and don’t have to be perfectly round. Place each dough ball back into a bowl, it can be the bowl you used to mix, it can be a new clean bowl, whichever makes your heart happy. Once you’re done placing all the orbs of flour & fat back into their receptacle, get a dampened cloth (dish towel, tea towel, paper towel), cover the dough and let it rest for at least 15 minutes. I sometimes let mine set for 20 minutes...but that’s because I get distracted doing other things. Just don’t let your cloth dry out.
During this time you’ll be waiting, so now is a good time to turn on your comal, griddle, pan, whatever you’re going to use to cook your tortillas. You don’t want to wait until right before you’re going to cook them, the cooking surface won’t be hot enough. If things go wrong, they go wrong here —finding a balance with the thickness of the dough & the amount of heat you are cooking the tortillas with is key. This is where the happy medium MUST take place. I have an electric stove so I set my heat for a cast iron griddle (comal) just hotter than medium, because cast iron gets really hot and retains heat extremely well. Tortillas only need to be on their cooking surface no longer than 8 seconds. So before cooking your tortillas, adjust your heat accordingly. Test a couple small pieces of rolled out dough before you start the whole batch.
The Process
With flour, lightly dust your impeccably clean work surface (again) along with the rolling pin. Reach in to grab a ball of dough, leave the rest covered. You may notice some fat has released from the dough, it’s completely fine, just roll with it. Flatten ball slightly and coat with flour. Begin rolling out your tortilla with the rolling pin. It takes me about 2-3 minutes to get the desired size of 7” round and thickness, which is most closely described to the thickness of wax paper*. It’s fine if they aren’t round, but they should be somewhat thin & approx 6-8” roundish and don’t feel like you need to bust out everything in half hour, it’s going to take a minute to find your tortilla rolling technique.
*Note: If you find that you can’t roll out the dough to the size or thickness mentioned above because your dough is snapping back or isn’t stretching, your liquids were too cold at the beginning of the dough-making process. You’ll have to start over.
Once that beauty is flat & circular carefully pick up your tortilla round, laying it flat on your palm (or wrap it around your rolling pin) and gently flip (or unroll) tortilla onto the hot surface and cook for 3-8 seconds depending on how hot you have your pan. Careful not to burn your self here...I burn my fingers quite a bit. Then, I usually check my first one, peeking in on the cooking side for a golden brown on the bubbling, for me it’s about 6 seconds. Then, with a spatula flip over to cook for an additional 4-6 seconds. Time will be slightly shorter on the flip side. Also, don’t listen to your other Mexican friends about how they just use their fingers, don’t be ashamed to use a spatula, everyone does at the beginning. Anyways, once the tortilla is cooked, place it between two clean kitchen towels, or one folded in half, this keeps them soft & warm. Repeat the entire process until your bowl is empty!
Flour your surface and rolling pin.
Flatten dough, coat with flour.
Roll to 7” roundish with thickness of wax paper
Transfer to cooking surface
Cook 3-8 seconds (until bubbling is golden brown)
Flip and cook for additional 4-6 seconds
Place fresh, hot tortilla in a clean kitchen towel & move on.
Storing
The best way to store tortillas, if you have any to keep, is in a ziplock or plastic bag, either in the fridge or in the freezer. No special requirements, just let the tortillas cool to room temperature before storage.
Re-heating
Remove from freezer until thawed or from fridge about 10 minutes before reheating on a hot griddle. I do not use the microwave to reheat tortillas, not even store-bought ones. Microwaving tortillas is blasphemy to me. Since some people do it; place a damp paper towel over the tortilla in the microwave and cook at 10 second intervals until desired likeness.
How to fix my dough
If there was ever a single thing that I find annoying about recipe sites, recipes in general, is that the author rarely sets you up for success. There are a small amount of sites that include the things that might go wrong & direct readers how to fix the issue. Or maybe they do but it’s so far into the writing people just don’t want to scroll to find it. So none of these listed below should happen with this recipe, but I know there’s other factors that can cause issues...so here are the top 3 things that could be happening to your homemade tortillas.
Dough is too dry. Add 1/2 Tbsp melted fat & 1/2 Tbsp warm water/milk. You’ll want your dough to be slightly sticky; meaning it sticks mostly to itself and leaves very little on your hands or workspace.
Dough is too wet (very sticky). Add 1 Tbsp at a time of flour incorporate (knead) well after each addition. Like stated above you want your dough slightly wet. You’ll be using more dough to roll out.
Hard/brittle as they cool. Two things could be going on here: Either your dough is too thick, your heat is too low, leaving your tortillas on the heat too long which causes over cooking OR your cooking surface is too hot and you’re over cooking. A. Make sure your tortillas aren’t too thick. Thickness is a big factor. You want them to be slightly thicker than a piece of paper. B. They have been over cooked. Try a heat slightly hotter than medium & only leave tortilla on the griddle for 3-5 seconds.
Other things to keep in mind, not only with tortillas, but when cooking in general; we all use different ingredient brands, we all live at different altitudes so cooking environments will vary, additionally, gas, glass cooktop, and electric stove stop all generate variant amounts of heat. Results will vary as in any cooking situatio. The things to remember about homemade tortillas; warm liquids to make the dough + medium-high cooking surface + perfect thickness + golden bubbling = perfect tortillas every time!
I know there’s no such thing as foolproof when it comes to cooking & baking. But I did hope to do a thoroughly written out step-by-step, fail-proof tortilla recipe...I feel like I achieved that, but if you don’t feel the same way, your tortillas aren’t turning out edible each time, have questions or need clarification please feel free to ask. Live chat, email, Instagram message, comments...I’ll do my best to help ya out.
Hasta la próxima, friends
SALUD 🥃