Homemade tortillas

After seeing this recipe at AnnArbor.com, we decided to make our own tortillas.  We ended up using the Joy of Cooking recipe due to logistics.  In any event, this was a resounding success.

Our notes:

• These were absurdly easy to make.  Five ingredients total: flour, baking powder, salt, vegetable shortening (or, in our parlance, "olive oil"), and water.
• The two recipes differed only in the amounts of baking powder and shortening.  Joy of Cooking called for less baking powder but far more shortening: 2 tsp. shortening vs. 1/4 cup (!).  The tortillas we made tasted heavily of olive oil--not a bad thing but next time I think we should try the recipe that uses less oil and see if that makes a difference in the texture.
• We used our handy griddle rather than a skillet.  This worked fabulously.
• Our tortillas came out a bit thicker and denser than store-bought ones, and they seemed to be less pliant (i.e. they would tend to crack if you tried to roll everything into a burrito).  Perhaps we should have used more baking powder?  Or less oil?
• The original recipe I had seen called for vegetable oil, and we used olive oil instead.  As a result our tortillas had a stronger taste than if we had followed the recipe more closely, but the substitution did not seem to affect the cooking time at all.

Resting the dough before cooking.

Once again, the griddle came through for us.

Stack o' tortillas.

yum.

Joy of Cooking (2006), p. 608