Flour Tortillas

Flour tortillas are delicious!  My family loves them, but I usually just buy uncooked tortillas at Costco and then just cook them at home.  I didn't want to bother making my own specially when the ones I buy are pretty good.  

Anyway, a friend of mine asked me to share my flour tortilla recipe and I told her I didn't have one, and how I would usually just buy mine.  The next day I came across a recipe I took a picture of a while back and told her we ought to get together and try making some tortillas.  She had a recipe, I had a recipe, and we gave them a try.  The tortillas did not turn out okay (they were not soft at all), so I told her I'd definitely be sticking to store bought.

For some reason though, I was not okay about not being able to get this right and I kept searching and trying different recipes/ways of making the tortillas.  Another friend of mine shared her family recipe and I decided to make two batches a couple of days ago.  One batch was my friend's family recipe, and the other was a recipe shared by my other friend.  We decided that my friend's family recipe was overall the best because it produced softer tortillas (it called for a little bit more shortening/lard).  I still wanted to tweak the recipe a little bit and made a new batch today.  The tortillas turned out delicious and soft so I'm calling this modified recipe the winner in my opinion.  It took a lot of different batches of tortillas to finally arrive to this one, but it was a great learning experience.  My kids were specially happy with me experimenting and them being some of the judges. Anyway, give this recipe a try and hopefully they turn out yummy for you as well.  They are seriously so easy to make!

*Note: This last couple of times I made tortillas I used lard, however, my friend says she usually uses vegetable shortening when making hers.  

Also, I just used my kitchen aid to mix and knead the dough (using the dough hook) instead of doing it manually.

INGREDIENTS:

3 cups of flour
1/2 tbsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sugar
1/2 cup vegetable shortening or lard
1 cup hot water

Whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar.  Add the lard and mix until dough is crumbly.  Slowly incorporate the hot water and knead for about 10 minutes.  The dough will be soft and elastic at this point.  Divide the dough into 12-13 pieces and roll each one into a ball.  Cover and let rest for about 30 minutes.

Preheat a griddle or skillet to medium-high heat (griddle temperature between 400-425 degrees).  Roll each ball into a thin round tortillas using a rolling pin.  Place your tortilla into the hot griddle and cook for about 20 seconds then flip, once  the cooking side is somewhat golden (around a minute of cooking time), flip the tortilla once again and cook on that side until slightly golden (at this point the tortilla would start poofing up).  Remove tortilla and place in a tortilla warmer, or wrap in a kitchen towel.  Enjoy!!