Homemade Tortillas

Well folks, I got the opportunity to try making tortillas sooner than I thought--I had forgotten that we were scheduled to have tacos for supper tonight and we were plumb out of store-bought tortillas.  I found several recipes in an online search, and chose one from Cooks.com to try, since it seemed to be the simplest, and I already had all of the ingredients on hand (about half of the recipes I found call for lard, which is just not a staple in our household).

EASY HOMEMADE FLOUR TORTILLAS

3 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup warm water

Combine all the flour, salt, vegetable oil, and water until it forms a dough.

Roll the dough into a big ball and take about an 1 to 2 inch pieces off. Pat the dough flat with your hands or take a rolling pin and roll into circles.

Put the dough on a flat pan on the stove and let the sides cook until there are little brown specks on both sides like you would see on other tortillas.

These tasted pretty good.  Everyone seemed to like them, even the ones who won't normally eat flour tortillas (they prefer corn taco shells)--in fact, three of the boys who live here just ate them plain, while giving serving suggestions in between bites (putting cinnamon and sugar on them was a common theme).  The recipe made 14 tortillas, about half were taco size: about 7" diameter; the others were larger: 10-14" diameter, so probably if I had made all taco size I could have made around 20 of them.  They were easy to make, and I calculate that the ingredients cost just $0.40.  It was also kind of fun that each one had a unique shape :-) 

I think I may want to try one of the recipes that calls for baking powder to see how they compare, and I'm going to need to make a whole lot more of them, I think.  I had been hoping to be able to stock up the freezer so that I don't have to make tortillas every time we have tacos, but there were only 5 left over for me to freeze.  All in all, a worthwhile experiment.