How to Make Flour Tortillas At Home Recipe

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A dish towel partially covering stack of soft, chewy flour tortillas.

Serious Eats / Joshua Bousel

Why It Works

  • Lard gives these tortillas a subtle porky flavor, but vegetable shortening can be substituted if needed.
  • Baking powder creates the bready, chewy texture.
  • Cooking the tortillas on a very hot skillet results in maximum tenderness.

I’ve spent a lot of time in Texas, and it has left me with a deep love for flour tortillas. I’m very particular about them: I don’t just want the very best flour tortillas, I want the right ones for the job. In my eyes, there are two overarching categories, and which one you use depends on what they’re being served with. For example, when eating the tortillas with grilled meats and seafood, I want the thin and ultra-tender ones that are so fat-laden that you can practically see through them, like oil-stained paper (for that style of tortilla, check out my recipe here). On the other hand, when eating the tortillas with melted cheese or fluffy eggs, I prefer thicker, softer, chewier ones. That’s the recipe I decided to perfect on this go-round.

The Chewy

In my experience, this style of tortilla—thick, soft, and with a bready chew—is the most common across Texas, served at almost all the fast-food taco joints. It’s almost always the tortilla of choice for breakfast tacos, quesadillas, and more. Compared to the thin, lard-enriched ones I’ve written about before, this style of chewy tortillas is more similar to the flour tortillas sold at most supermarkets, except that’s selling them way too short, since most supermarket ones are terrible versions of the real deal.

To start my testing, I began by looking at a a recipe from Lisa Fain’s Homesick Texan, which has always been a great source of Tex-Mex recipes. Hers is interesting in that she trades the traditional lard for vegetable oil, water for milk, and uses baking powder for leavening. To test her innovations, I whipped up a batch of her tortillas alongside a batch that used the more common lard and water, and no baking powder.

A metal bowl of dry and wet ingredients for tortillas.

Serious Eats / Joshua Bousel

The method is the same in both cases, despite the different ingredients: combine dry ingredients, rub in fat for a coarse texture, add warm liquid.

Then I kneaded both doughs until they became smooth and semi-elastic. After a ten-minute rest, I divided them up into small balls, rested those 15 minutes longer, and finally rolled them out to eight-inch discs.

A disk of soft flour tortilla cooking in cast-iron skillet.

Serious Eats / Joshua Bousel

I cooked all of the tortillas in a hot 10-inch cast iron skillet, where they quickly puffed and developed brown spots. As each tortilla was done, I transferred it to a plate covered with a clean dish towel. This covered rest time is important—the steam helps soften the tortillas and keep them warm.

The Homesick Texan recipe (with milk, vegetable oil, and baking powder) had the most bready, chewy texture, but it was a little bland and also not as soft as I was hoping. The tortillas made in the more traditional manner (with lard, water, and no baking powder) had the best flavor and tenderness, but lacked the thickness and chewiness I was looking for.

Putting It All Together

Flour tortilla dough rolled out into a disk.

Serious Eats / Joshua Bousel

Seeing the advantages and disadvantages of both recipes side-by-side, I was able to begin to devise a new recipe that captured the best of each. I chose lard as my fat, since I knew it would bring the flavor I wanted, and I kept the baking powder for its leavening ability.

I still wasn’t totally sure whether to use water or milk, so I whipped up two new batches where everything else was equal, and found that the ones made with water were just a hair more tender and not noticeably different in flavor from the milk ones, so I settled on water. After all, it’s free and always available.

As I was cooking my final batch, I stumbled across one other very important factor: I just happened to notice that the first tortilla I cooked wasn’t nearly as good as the second one, even though they were the same exact dough. The only difference I could think of was the heat of my cast iron skillet, since it may have gotten hotter by the time the second tortilla hit it.

“At 500°F, the tortillas should bubble, puff, and brown in just 45 seconds per side.”

To find out, I grabbed my infrared thermometer and measured the temperature of the skillet while cooking the remaining tortillas. And indeed, what I found was the best tortillas came out of a 500°F (260°C) skillet; anything less, and the tortillas were significantly less soft and chewy. I was pretty shocked by what a big difference the skillet temperature made—mind you, I wasn’t trying to cook any tortillas on a warm skillet, it was hot the whole time, and yet differences in its temperature still had a big impact. If you don’t have an infrared thermometer to measure the temperature of your skillet, you can try to judge the heat by the cooking time: At 500°F, the tortillas should bubble, puff, and brown in just 45 seconds per side.

stack of soft and chewy flour tortillas partially covered with dish towel

Serious Eats / Joshua Bousel

After a short rest under a kitchen towel, they were all set to go, and man, were they delicious—full of flavor, tender, and just begging for a skillet of queso fundido to dip into.

A skillet of queso fundido with flour tortillas, pico de gallo, and lime wedges

Serious Eats / Joshua Bousel

So I did what any sane person would do, and whipped up a batch of queso fundido, then tore into my pile of tortillas. Would you believe me if told you I was more excited about them than the gobs of melted cheese I was using them to scoop up? Well, if you don’t, then you don’t understand just how much I love my flour tortillas.

May 2015

Recipe Facts

Ingredients

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour

  • 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

  • 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt

  • 3 tablespoons lard or vegetable shortening

  • 3/4 cups warm water (approximately 110°F/43°C)

Directions

  1. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Rub lard into flour mixture using your fingertips until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add warm water and work dough with hands until completely combined and no dry flour is left in bowl.

  2. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead until smooth, about 1 minute. Cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap and let rest for 10 minutes. Divide dough into 8 equal pieces; roll each piece of dough into a ball. Cover dough balls with a damp cloth or plastic wrap and let rest an additional 15 minutes.

  3. Preheat cast iron skillet, griddle, or comal to 500°F (260°C). Place one ball of dough on a lightly floured surface and pat down into a flat disc. Using a rolling pin, roll dough out to an 8-inch round. Place dough in skillet and cook until bubbles form on top side and bottom side has brown spots, 30-60 seconds. Flip tortilla and cook until second side develops brown spots, 30-60 seconds longer. Transfer tortilla to a plate and cover with clean dish cloth. Repeat with remaining balls of dough. Serve immediately while still warm.

Notes

The tortillas are best eaten while fresh and still warm. They can be stored in the refrigerator and reheated individually in a hot skillet or wrapped together in foil and placed in a warm oven for reuse, though they won’t be as good as when fresh.

Special Equipment

Nutrition Facts (per serving)
158 Calories
5g Fat
24g Carbs
3g Protein
Nutrition Facts
Servings: 8
Amount per serving
Calories 158
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 5g 7%
Saturated Fat 2g 10%
Cholesterol 5mg 2%
Sodium 329mg 14%
Total Carbohydrate 24g 9%
Dietary Fiber 1g 3%
Total Sugars 0g
Protein 3g
Vitamin C 0mg 0%
Calcium 56mg 4%
Iron 2mg 9%
Potassium 34mg 1%
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.

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