Home made tortillas!

The other day I accidentally tried a new recipe.  This recipe was a tortilla recipe in one of my cook books (Sam Stern's Real Food Real Fast) which had intrigued me for years but I never dared try... until now!  (We'll pretend that this was a moment of bravery rather than because all my local shops had run out of tortillas for some reason.)

To make them I used: 

225g plain white flour
1 tsp salt
25g butter
150ml warm water ( this is a rough estimate as I started off with the 125ml in the recipe but needed more...)
A sprinkle of herbs, I used oregano and basil.

I started off by measuring out my flour, then sifting it into my bowl and adding the salt and herbs to it.
Once I had done that I added weighed the butter and rubbed the butter into the flour mix until I couldn't see or feel it anymore. When I had rubbed the butter in I dug out my measuring jug and measured 125ml of warm water for the mix.

I then got a fork and stirred the mix with the fork as I added the water slowly until it wasn't really stirring very easily and at that point I tried to combine it all together with my hands.  It still seemed very dry and not very flexible so I added a bit more water and this made it easier to knead, however I probably put too much in and it got a bit sticky.  When I got it to a point where I was happy with it I covered it with clingfilm and left it for about 15 minutes.

After the 15 minutes were up I dusted my kitchen side with flour and got the dough out of the bowl, then I divided it into 10 uneven balls.  I took one of the balls and rolled it for what seemed like an age until it seemed the right size for a tortilla, by this point it was incredibly thin... When I had rolled out my first tortilla I got the frying pan out and heated it for a few minutes before putting the tortilla on it.

As the first tortilla cooked I set about re-dusting my side with flour and rolling out the second one.  I did my first couple of tortillas like this and they became quite crispy but didn't brown. The third one ripped as I was rolling it, which caused a bit of cursing...  this was about the point where Paul came downstairs to help. 

I tasked Paul with keeping an eye on the cooking tortillas for me which helped make them a bit less brittle but we worked out that the dough was too dry after we had done a few more.  So Paul got the last remaining balls of dough added a bit more water to them, then helped me divide them equally before I rolled them out and finished cooking them. In the end a few of them even got a bit of colour on them! (Not many mind...)

Once done we put them aside whilst Paul made a vegetable fajita mix to fill them with, the more brittle ones made large quesadillas. All in all it was very tasty and I got to take the left overs with me to work for lunch the next day!

Obviously it is a lot easier and less frustrating time consuming to buy them but making yourself them does make them that bit tastier!  I can see these being on the special meal favourites list along with home made pizza and chocolate chip cookies.