- 1 1/2 cups cake flour
We recommend Swans Down Cake Flour - 1 cup corn flour
We recommend MaSeCa brand corn flour - A dash of rice flour
We recommend Bob's Red Mill brand rice flour - 2 1/2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
We recommend Argo brand Double-Acting Baking Powder - 1/2 cup lard or vegetable shortening
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup cold water
- Mix all of the dry ingredients together, reserving a dash of the corn flour.
- Section off and add the butter and lard or shortening in spoonful-sized pieces to the dry mixture.
- Using your fingertips, thoroughly mix the butter and lard or shortening with the dry ingredients until the mixture has a crumbly texture with no pieces larger than the tip of your thumb.
- Add about half of the cold water and mix thoroughly into the crumbled dough. The crumbles should combine into bigger crumbles.
- Add half of the remaining water and mix, then add the remaining amount and stir until formed into a dough.
- Press together by hand until the dough balls up and the exterior is not tacky.
- Cover over with a damp towel or damp paper towel and let rest for an hour.
- When the dough has rested, pinch off enough dough to fit neatly between two palms and roll into a ball. Set the ball aside on parchment paper.
- Continue rolling new balls until all the dough is used - there should be 16-20 little balls in total.
- Cover these with a damp paper towel and let sit for fifteen more minutes.
- Heat a nonstick skillet on high for a few minutes.
- Press one of the dough balls out into the shape of a tortilla by squeezing between the palms, placing onto a piece of parchment paper, and then rolling with a pin to the desired thickness. You may need to flour the rolling pin just a bit to keep the dough from sticking to it when rolled thin.
- One at a time, place each tortilla into the hot pan, moving it around for 15-30 seconds per side until the surface is not raw. *Overcooking it will make it crisp and inflexible.
- Stack onto a piece of aluminum foil and wrap the foil loosely around the stack of tortillas to keep warm until serving. Enjoy while warm as a palette for tacos, fajitas, quesedillas, or by themselves with a bit of honey butter!
A few notes:
*We use cake flour instead of regular or all-purpose flour because cake flour because it has a finer texture than regular flour and is also readily available in stores. By contrast, all-purpose flour has been made from high- and low- gluten flours blended (when enriched) with vitamins and is more useful for general applications but adds a coarser texturing.
*The blend of corn flour provides a sweet flavor, rich graininess, and textural element back into the finished tortillas. Using straight cake flour would taste more cake-like and straight corn flour would be more mealy in texture. In practice, the total 2 & 1/2 cups of flour in this recipe can be altered anywhere between one and one-and a half cups of either flour so long as the other type of flour makes up the rest. Try it and see what balance of flavor and texture works for you.
*Many cooks don't like to use lard because of the animal origins of the rendered product, but there is a generally noticeable flavor difference between using shortening, clarified from vegetables, and lard, rendered and clarified from pork. Most people prefer the taste of lard - it goes well with the corn flour.
*We use cold water to mix the tortillas to prevent the lard or shortening from softening within the dough once mixed, which would alter the texture and/or cook time of the tortilla.
*Covering the dough and letting it sit activates the first "action" of the double-action baking powder. "Double-action" refers to the fact that the baking powder will cause dough to rise twice: once when mixed with water and the second time when heated.
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