Homemade Flour Tortillas
This tortilla recipe is so simple and delicious. Elevate any meal with these easy homemade flour tortillas!
Ingredients
- 2 cups (240 g) unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading stage
- 1 1/4 teaspoons (7 g) kosher salt, half if using fine sea salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 cup (58 g) unsalted butter, softened can sub with avocado oil or olive oil
- 2/3 cup (155 g) warm water
Instructions
- Whisk flour, salt and baking powder together in a medium bowl. Add softened butter or oil and use a fork to combine until crumbly mixture forms.
- Stir in warm water and mix with until a shaggy dough forms. Use your hands to gently knead the dough in the bowl to get the mixture to form a rough ball.
- Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead for another 1 to 2 minutes or until smooth and not sticking to the surface.
- Cut the dough into 10 pieces for taco-sized tortillas or 4 pieces for large burrito-sized tortillas. Shape each portion into a ball using your hands and tension of the work surface.
- Cover the dough balls with a light kitchen towel to rest. Let the dough rest for 20 minutes up to two hours. If you are making the dough in advance, you can store the tortillas balls in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 24 hours.
- Using a heavy rolling pin, roll out each ball until very thin (until you start to see the work surface through them.) For taco-sized, the balls should roll out to about 6 to 8 inches. For burrito-sized, about 10 to 12 inches.
- Heat a large cast iron skillet to medium-high heat. Do not add any oil to the pan. Wait until pan is HOT to start cooking the tortillas. Lay the rolled out tortilla in the pan and cook on first side until it puffs slightly (around 30 seconds). You will hopefully see little brown spots on the underside appear, this means time to flip! Flip with spatula and cook again till lightly brown. If the skillet is hot enough, cooking time should be about 60 seconds to 1 minute total.
- Stack tortillas on a plate or in a tortilla holder and cover with a light kitchen towel while you continue making the rest of the tortillas.
Notes
- The dough should come together nicely within a couple minutes of kneading- not too sticky, not too dry. Depending on the humidity in your home, they made need a bit more flour or water. Add a tiny amount of flour if too sticky or a splash of water if a bit dry. Add and knead until you reach a smooth texture.
- This recipe will make around 10 taco-sized tortillas or 4 very large burrito size tortillas perfect for quesadillas.
- If your first few tortillas are taking longer than a minute to bubble, the skillet probably isn’t as hot as it should be. Crank up the heat. Once you make a few, you will find a rhythm and get a better feel for the heat setting and timing of each tortilla.
- A tortilla press will help speed up this process but I prefer the thinness I can get by rolling them out with a heavy rolling pin. If you do have a tortilla press, I would recommend pressing twice per tortilla or using rolling pin to further roll each tortilla after pressing if necessary. Use pieces of parchment paper on either side of press to prevent tortilla from sticking. Depending on your press, you may not need to roll at all.
Thinness of these tortillas is personal preference. Leave them thicker if you prefer a meatier tortilla. You can experiment with the thickness as you go! - If you like a bit of char, keep the tortillas in the skillet a bit longer.
- Storage: Once the tortillas cool, store them in an airtight bag or container at room temperature for up to 5 days or freeze for up to 3 months. Thaw them at room temperature when ready to eat and heat in skillet or oven on low to warm them up. You can also store the rolled out tortillas (before cooking) in the freezer. Just make sure you separate each tortilla with parchment paper before freezing in airtight bag or container. When ready to cook, thaw to room temperature and cook like normal with instructions above.