Homemade Flour Tortillas
Updated March 26, 2019
Homemade Flour Tortillas are very easy to make at home and taste so much better than store-bought tortillas! Serve with any Mexican meal or make them as a snack; you can’t go wrong with homemade tortillas!
Fresh, Homemade Flour Tortillas
Is there anything better than fresh, homemade tortillas? Well, maybe freshly baked cookies, but homemade tortillas are a close second:) I love homemade tortillas! We used to go to Cafe Rio to get our fresh tortilla fix, but last summer we made Homemade Flour Tortillas in our own kitchen and have been hooked ever since. I can get my homemade tortillas whenever I want! And since I have been craving Mexican food like mad, Josh has been making these homemade flour tortillas on a regular basis. Make them once and you will crave them too. Pregnant or not!
How to Make Flour Tortillas
I promise homemade flour tortillas are super easy to make and you probably have all of the ingredients in our kitchen right now!
Mix and Create
Flour tortilla ingredients are simple: flour, salt, baking powder, shortening, and water. Mix these up, and even add flavors you like. Sometimes we like to go all out and make flavored flour tortillas. I love our Cilantro Lime Flour Tortillas. That is why you see green things in our homemade tortillas:) We add a little cilantro and lime zest for extra flavor – feel free to get creative!
Rest and Roll
The hardest part is letting the dough rest for 30 minutes. It isn’t super long, but make sure you plan ahead. After the dough rests, you roll out the tortillas with a rolling pin. If you have a tortilla press you can use it, but we just use a rolling pin. Our tortillas aren’t perfectly shaped, but that doesn’t bug me one bit.
Cook and Flip
Cook the tortillas until they start to bubble up. Flip and cook the other side! Caleb loves watching the tortillas grow bubbles:)
Eat and Store
Homemade flour tortillas will keep in the fridge for up to 3-4 days if you have the willpower to wait or have leftovers. I never wait or have leftovers. ๐
Endless Reasons for Homemade Flour Tortillas
The flour tortillas are good plain or you can use them in your favorite Mexican recipes. You can make quesadillas, burritos, tacos, fajitas, enchiladas, wraps, etc. The choices are endless! But make sure you eat at least one fresh tortilla, hot off the griddle. They are SO good!
Plain or jazzed up, Homemade Flour Tortillas are all kinds of awesome! Plus, you will get major Martha Stewart points for making your own tortillas at home…even though they are super easy to make. You can impress your family and friends!
And look at that little stinker trying to snatch my fresh tortillas. He is a smart kiddo! Fresh tortillas are made to be eaten right away.
Homemade Flour Tortillas
Ingredients
For regular tortillas:
- 2 cups all-purposeย flour
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 3 tablespoons shortening
- 3/4 cup water
For Cilantro Lime Tortillas:
- 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
- Zest of 1 small lime
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking powder. Add shortening and mix with a fork until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
- Make a well in the center of the mixture and add the water. If you are making Cilantro Lime Tortillas, add the cilantro and lime zest. Mix until dough starts to form.
- Place dough on a clean floured surface and knead until dough is smooth. This will take 3-4 minutes.
- Place the dough in a bowl and cover. Let sit for 30 minutes.
- With a dough knife, divide the dough into quarters. Next, divide each quarter into thirds. You should have 12 equal dough portions. Using a rolling pin, roll out each dough portion into a circle, about 6-7 inches in diameter.
- Heat a skillet or a griddle pan to medium-high heat. Cook the tortillas until they start to puff up and are lightly browned, about 2 minutes. Flip and cook until lightly browned on the other side. Place tortillas on a plate and cover with a towel to keep warm while you make the rest of the tortillas. Serve!
- Note-these tortillas are great eaten plain or you can make tacos, quesadillas, enchiladas, burritos, wraps, etc. They will keep in the fridge for up to 3-4 days. Reheat before eating!
Have you tried this recipe?
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These are great! Thanks for the recipe. I used coconut oil (solid, not melted) instead of shortening and they were perfect.
can i use oil insead of shorting
I just made these today, a double batch and they’re delicious! My kids love them too.
I made homemade tortillas one time(not this recipe)…they didn’t turn out great. I’m anxious to try your recipe but I was wondering if I could substitute butter for shortening & still get good results?
I haven’t tried them with butter. Let me know if you do!
Why do the tortillas get hard after we rewarm them ?
so, I tried to make homemade tortillas yesterday with my new cast iron press (using a similar recipe). I pressed them into a 6″ thin circle but when I put them into pan, they shrunk up to around a 4″ circle and puffed up to a thicker tortilla. What did I do wrong?
I will try your recipe the next time to see if it acts differently.
Can anyone give me some advice?
Thanks,
I came across this recipe while looking up how to make homemade tortillas. I’m going to be using your recipe for dinner tonight (its close to 1am now). I was thinking about making a lime jalapeno or serrano pepper version with dived peppers and lime zest maybe a bit of spring onions. I know that would probably be too spicy to serve most children. Unfortunately /Fortunately depending on how you look at it its just hubby & I and he likes spicy but I do moderate it down because the g.i. Dr said no hot peppers. But I have an ex military Scottish kilt and scotch drinking till I’m 100 if I’m blessed to live that long type of husband so he still eats them occasionally. Do you think the lime jalapeno green onions idea will work? Any suggestions welcome…hopefully you’ll read this in time! It’s about 14 hours before I start dinner. Otherwise will let you know how it went. Love the recipe! Plan to look at the website more very soon!
hi, what do you mean by shortening? exactly what do you use, like hydrogenated Crisco or somesuch?
Do you dust the work surface, rolling pin or dough with additional flour before rolling out?
The work surface.
Made this the other day, my husband was worried I told him if he didn’t like it there was two of the mission shells left in the fridge he could have, and I used butter because I had no shortening, low and behold mission shells are still in the fridge absolutely delicious good bye store bought thank you for this recipe
Wow- these look like a great way to change up your typical taco night!!
Hello! I am going to try for the firsttime, please can you tell me if the dough can be put in the freezer?
Yes, you can freeze the dough. Defrost before rolling out.
As others have said, the idea of making homemade tortillas seemed almost intimidating. I’ve tried several recipes and I’ve been trying to perfect the task that is the homemade tortilla. This recipe really seemed to work out well. My husband loved them and said “you finally got it!” A large part of the solution was learning to roll them thin enough. It’s taken me several thick ass tortillas to learn how to roll them thin enough. Delicious.
So good! I made these the other night for enchiladas and they turned out great! the dough is super easy to work with and doesn’t stick every where like I thought it would. I used butter instead of margin and loved the flavor it had. the texture and smell are just like Chevy’s restaurant tortillas. yummm!!
I bake some wonderful cracker breads from the Italian Chips blog– A Canโt-Stop-Eating Flat Bread Recipe
I use KitchenAid pasta rollers to make oval- shaped breads. ย It’s much quicker than 60 or 70 rolling pin passes for each bread. ย Is the tortilla dough dry enough to run through pasta rollers? ย If so, I think I could roll the dough in both directions to make a more round shape tortilla or maybe finish with a rolling pin.
My husband made these today after we couldnโt find tortillas at the store! They were so easy to make and are delicious!!
I have tried this recipe and the tortillas turn out very nice, using half whole wheat flour and half all purpose flour.
AMAZING! Sooo simple yet genuinely authentic flavor. Iโll never buy flour tortillas again!
Yahoo!