Homemade Flour Tortillas

I have made it clear almost in each post now that I love Mexican food, I simply adore it. In Tirana there two or three (maybe more) restaurants that serve Mexican food luckily, but I love to cook it myself. On my beginnings though, I had it difficult to make tortillas so I always bought them, I still do just to have them on handy, but once in a while when I have some extra time I cook them from scratch.

I have tried different recipes until I found the right one and I think this is the easiest. It requires just 3 ingredients (4 if you count salt) and does not need a lot of kneading too.

Serving 10 tortillas

Cooking time: 20 minutes

Resting time: 30-60 minutes

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups self-rising flour
• 1 ¼ cup tepid water
• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• a pinch of salt

Extra flour for dusting

1. Add all the ingredients in a mixing bowl.
2. Knead until the dough comes together
3. Sprinkle some extra flour on the countertop and knead the dough until smooth and elastic, approximately 3 minutes.
4. Divide the dough in 10 equal parts ( if you scale them you’ll have 10 parts by 50gr each) and shape them to a ball.
5. Cover the dough with a cling film to prevent from drying out and let them sit for about 30 to 60 minutes (I took a stroll with my kids after this step and let the dough rest for about 1 hour). This step makes the dough very elastic and pliable so it rolls out very easily.
6. Dust the countertop and the rolling pin with extra flour and roll each ball into a round thin circle with a diameter of circa 15cm or as thin as you can.
7. I suggest to roll out all tortillas since baking process is very short. Keep the rolled tortillas covered with a damp cloth so they won’t dry.
8. Heat a non-stick pan in medium heat and bake each tortilla for about 2 minutes. You’ll see the dough will start to puff, turn it to the other side and bake for 30 seconds. You don’t have to bake them for long, they’ll be ready when you’ll see small brown spots. If you cook them longer they’ crack when folding.
9. Cover each tortilla with a damp cloth to keep them warm and soft.

There are a lot of recipes where you can use tortillas, like Tacos, Quesadillas, Enchiladas, Chimichangas, Burritos etc… or just have them plain.