Flour Tortillas

Sounds simple, right? I mean they're just flour, shortening, salt and water.

NO, I tried making them last night, FAIL!! TOTAL FAIL!!! Allow me to explain..

 I made this recipe:

 3 cups flour

 1 tsp. salt 

1/3 cup vegetable oil 

1 cup warm water

 Combine all the flour, salt, vegetable oil, and water in a food processor until it forms a dough. Knead the dough on a floured surface until smooth. Using your best sense of judgement pull portions from the dough and roll into  small balls, using your hand lightly flatten a ball, use a rolling pin to roll into circles. Put the dough on a preheated griddle or non stick pan on the stove and cook the tortillas until they are puffy and browned. 

They came out terrible!!! I failed to take pictures of me putting the ingredients in the food processor, sorry.
At first, I thought okay, these seem okay, dough looked like, well dough. So, I began rolling out the dough into circles, which is surprisingly harder than I though!

I rolled out the first tortilla and put it into an non greased non stick skillet on medium-high heat, and waited for them to turn into "tortillas". I waited, and waited, and waited........

They took forever to do anything! They didn't brown, took them forever to brown in the slightest! I fried my first tortilla for probably five minutes, I'm not kidding. The whole time I was thinking, "this can't be right, I've seen them cook faster on food programs." Eventually it started to bubble a little, so I flipped it over, it was HARD, VERY, VERY HARD!!

I thought maybe it was just beginners...failure? So I made another one, same problem, I had tortilla "vinyl records". They also tasted like flour, I know, it's a "flour tortilla" but it tasted exactly like raw flour, it was terrible!!
    My kids ate them though, haha, and my dog, so they weren't lethal just hard, not exactly something you would be proud of feeding to your family and guests.

I looked up another recipe, I refused to be defeated by flour!!

Here's the recipe I found and used:
2-3/4 cups all purpose flour, plus a little extra for rolling the tortillas
5 tablespoons vegetable shortening
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cups very warm tap water

Combine the flour and shortening in a food processor, dissolve the salt in the water and slowly combine the salt water to the flour until all the flour is absorbed and the dough has turned into a ball and is slightly wet. *You may not use all of the salt water.

 Dump the dough onto a floured surface and knead with extra flour until dough is smooth. Divide the dough into 12 portions (less if you want bigger tortillas). Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rest for at least 30 minutes. Once they've rested heat your griddle or non stick pan over medium to medium-high heat. On your floured surface, flatten one of your tortilla portions slightly with your hands. Using a rolling pin roll the dough forward and back, rotating it just slightly after ever forward and back motion. (THIS WILL HELP TO INSURE A ROUND TORTILLA!!!) Mine never came out perfectly round, but the more I rolled the better I got! 

I sprayed my heated pan a little bit with cooking spray, just as a precautionary.

I threw my first tortilla from my second recipe onto my pan. I waited anxiously. IMMEDIATELY, it started to bubble!! I flipped the tortilla after about 30-45 seconds, I cooked the other side for about the same amount of time. I wiped out the pan after the first two. The cooking spray seemed to burn so I stopped using it, I had no issues with sticking.

Here's what they looked like!!! Pretty cool!! They were a little dusty, next time I think I wont use as much flour when I'm rolling out the dough. They didn't taste exactly like store bought tortillas; they were a little bland, but they weren't terrible. I will try making these again after I search for more recipes and try to figure out how to add a little more flavor. They were soft, and flimsy just the ones I'm used to eating. My husband agreed that they lacked something. Not sure what it is, but I will find out!!

I hope you enjoyed my "Tortilla" experiment! Let me know if you've made some tortillas and what yours were like! If you have an idea of how to help me make mine better please share!!!