Three-ingredient flour tortillas modified just a bit from this Taste of Home recipe.
Servings: 8 tortillas, about 7-8 inches in diameter
Sodium: None
Time: 30-45 minutes
Ingredients:
240 g (2 cups) all purpose flour
2/3 cups hot water (150 ml, about 190°F, just shy of boiling--see notes below about adding a little more water)
3 tablespoons olive oil (or any other kind of oil)
1) Combine all ingredients in a medium-sized bowl and let rest for 5 minutes, covered with a kitchen towel. This 5 minute rests makes the dough easier to knead and handle.
Hot water and salt are the two deviations that I made from the original Taste of Home recipe. The hot water makes the dough more tender and it's really important here, but you don't need to be too particular about the exact temperature. Just use water that is hot enough to make tea but not too hot that you can't handle the dough with your hands. If you use cold or even room temperature water, the dough doesn't come together and you'll need to add a lot of flour when you roll out the dough to keep it from sticking to everything.
2) Lightly oil your work surface and hands and gently knead until smooth, about 1-2 minutes. Divide into 8-12 equal-ish pieces, depending on how big you want to roll the tortillas. I used to always do 8 but now I'm doing 12 and making smaller tortillas because they're easier to roll and a better size for our meals. Form each piece into a ball, and let rest (covered) for 10 minutes. This 10 minute rest makes the dough easier to roll out.
3) Heat a skillet (cast iron works great) on medium-high or use an electric griddle on high (400°F) and very lightly oil the surface. I like using an electric griddle because the temperature is consistent and I can cook 3 tortillas at once on the large surface.
4) On a lightly floured surface, roll out each ball of dough to about 7-8 inches in diameter. See TIPS below for rolling out a round tortilla. If the dough keeps pulling back when you roll it, let it sit a few minutes and try rolling again. When your pan/skillet is hot, cook each tortilla until it starts to bubble and turns a medium golden brown (about 1-2 minutes), then flip and cook another 30-60 seconds. If your pan/skillet isn't hot enough, the tortillas dry out before they cook and you end up with a brittle tortilla. If it's too hot, you end up with a burned tortilla that might be a little raw.
If you know you're making the tortillas to eat at a later time and you like to toast your tortillas (as opposed to microwaving), cook them just long enough to get a very light golden brown color and then cool and store. Reheat them on a hot pan/griddle when you're ready to serve and they will toast up a little more and they won't be too dry. Otherwise just cook as usual and microwave them when you're ready to eat them.
Wrap the cooked tortillas in a kitchen towel while you make the rest so they stay soft and hot. If you have any leftovers, let them cool completely and store in a ziplock in the refrigerator.
TIPS
-If you use a silicon mat the dough doesn't stick as much as using a wood surface, so you'll need less flour when rolling out the tortillas.
-When I started making these tortillas, I used 3/4 cups (177 ml) of hot water and this made the dough just right, easy enough to roll out and handle with just a little dusting of flour. But as the months got warmer I've found that I'm better off reducing the water to 150 ml, which is about 2/3 cups. If you're new to tortillas, start with 150 ml, and then you can try adding more water as you get more comfortable with this dough. Lately I'm finding that 177 ml just makes the dough too sticky for me and I end up having to use so much flour to roll out the tortillas.
-This video was helpful for me in learning how to roll out a round tortilla. I roll my tortillas out a bit thinner than she does in the video but that's a matter of preference.
-Many flour tortilla recipes include baking powder so I tried making these with 1 teaspoon of Hain's sodium-free baking powder. The result was a thicker (but not fluffier) tortilla that was a little bit harder to roll out. I don't recommend adding the Hain's here because unlike regular baking powder, it didn't make these tortillas any fluffier.
