Copyright ©2007- 2020 Donna Goff

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Homemade Flour Tortillas

Tonight, my friend Alex's mom, Dianna taught us how to make tortillas from scratch. Dianna is from Corpus Christi, Texas. She used to have a family Tex-Mex Restaurant. These were flavorful and I tried my hand at making a few.

Makes 20+ 8 inch tortillas. Dough can be made ahead of time but should be used within 24 hours.

Ingredients
6 cups unbleached all purpose flour or whole wheat flour
2 tsp sea salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup vegetable oil (corn, sunflower, olive oil, or canola)
2 cups of very hot water (or less)

Directions
In a large mixing bowl or Bosch place flour, salt, baking powder, and mix with your hands or sifter, or in the Bosch with the wire whisk attachment until well blended. Add oil and mix with a fork, or fingers, or with the Bosch until thoroughly mixed an crumbly like pie crust.

Add hot water slowly, and mix with hands, making sure all flour mixture mixes. If using a Bosch, exchanged whisk for dough hook. Make sure you add water slowly and make sure the flour from the bottom of the bowl gets mixed into the dough. Add a little water to collect flour from bottom of the bowl. Mix until dough pulls away from the side of the bowl and forms a ball. Whole wheat flour is less smooth and pulls apart easily. Place dough on un-floured board and knead until smooth, or slam on the counter about 20 times. Let dough rest about 15 minutes.

Pull the dough into approximately 20 gulf ball sized balls. Keep covered with a damp cloth. Squeeze each ball into a flatten disc shape. Then place back under the moist cloth. Remove one disc from under the towel, and roll out into a circle. Place in a medium high pan for 30 seconds, until you see small bubbles appearing on the underside. Turn tortilla for another 30 seconds.

Cool on a paper towel, serve. Fill with desired filling.