Tortilla Tutorial

This post is dedicated to Jenne, who taught me everything I know about making tortillas, destroying my ability to eat packaged tortillas forever enriching my life.

You will need salt, flour, Crisco, and water. Here's the recipe for amounts.
There is a learning curve, so plan on a few practice rounds before you "go live"

Special tools you will need- a frying pan, a rolling pin, and a pastry cutter.

Put the flour in the bowl and add salt. I call it a palm full. It's hard to screw this up. Just don't add a handful or anything. Stir a little.

Dump the Crisco in the center of the flour. The more Crisco you have, the softer the tortillas will be. Unless you add too much, at which point you will not have tortillas but little grease balls.

Using the pastry cutter, cut in the Crisco until it resembles coarse crumbs (pictured below).
You can use two knives and cross cut for this as well, but pastry cutters are cheap. Obviously, I own two. We make a lot of tortillas. Once I rolled out 60 in one sitting. I don't recommend it.

Can you see the coarse crumbs? Look closely! Note to self: Next time, use flood lights. . .

Pour the hot water in all at once.

Stir until dough starts to combine.

At this point, you might need a little more water. You want the dough to be damp and soft, but not too sticky.

Get your deformed hand attached to your deformed arm in there and work that dough into a ball. If you over work the dough, it will be tough.

See the beautiful dough ball?

Now, seperate the big dough ball into 10-12 little dough balls. These are around golf ball size.

Flour the counter well and place the dough in the center.

With your awesome rolling pin, that someone who shall remain nameless used as a hammer and dinged up, roll from the center of the dough out, evenly around the circle. I found myself rolling towards my body as well as out. Go Figure. No wonder I am always completely covered in flour at the end of tortilla making.

If the dough starts to stick to the counter, pick it up and add flour to the counter. Flip the tortilla over and keep rolling. You are likely to do this 3-4 times in making 1 tortilla.

Preheat your pan to medium- on our stove it's a 5. Again, you'll figure this out as you practice. DO NOT OIL THE PAN. That step is very important. . .
Once you see bubbles like this, flip the tortilla over. You can use your fingers, a spatula, or the flapjack method. But beware, the steam in those bubbles is wicked hot.

Brown on the other side (approx 1-2 minutes per side) and eat.

DISCLAIMER: You may never be able to eat a store-bought tortilla again. . .