Homemade Flour Tortillas

I have a thing for good flour tortillas. However, back in January we started paying more attention to trans fat, and I found out that all of the flour tortillas at our grocery store had trans fat in them. (I've recently discovered that some of the uncooked flour tortillas at a few stores do NOT have trans fat - hurray!) We tried using corn tortillas for a while, and that was fine until near the end of my pregnancy. I started to have dreams about flour tortillas. Seriously.

One night, I was craving something. I narrowed it down to Sees and flour tortillas, but only mentioned chocolate to John. He was sympathetic, and offered to go to the mall to get some Sees for me. What a guy! However, I decided that even more than chocolate, I wanted to eat a flour tortilla. (Weird?) When I told John, he offered to MAKE me tortillas. I had tried several times before, but they always turned out tough. John did a quick search online, and found this recipe. Instead of going out to buy candy, he spent the rest of the evening making me tortillas. And boy were they good! Soft and so yummy. He made them for me again the night that I came home from the hospital; and a couple of nights ago he helped me make some for dinner.

They're really good plain, but we had most of them with refried beans, cheese, and taco sauce. Anyway, here's the recipe. Oh - the site it's from, Rockin Robin's Cooking Mexican Recipes, has some other recipes I'm hoping to try.

Homemade Flour Tortillas

Ingredients:
2 cups white flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. vegetable oil
3/4 cup warm water

Directions:
Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. In another bowl combine the warm water and oil. Add the water/oil mixture to the flour mixture, one tablespoon at a time and mix the dough with a fork. Once the water is mixed in, add another tablespoon of water and repeat the process until all the water is mixed into the dough. The dough will be sticky.

Lightly flour a wooden cutting board and knead the dough for about 5 minutes. If the dough is too sticky, add a little flour, but you want the dough to stay soft.

Place the dough back into the bowl and cover it with a damp towel or damp paper towel. Let the dough rest for 20 minutes.

Divide the dough into golf-ball-size balls by pinching off the dough with your thumb and fore finger. Form each ball into a nice ball shape.

Place the balls on a flat dish making sure they don't touch each other and cover with the damp cloth.

Let the dough rest again for 10 minutes.

Preheat a skillet to medium high heat.

Lightly dust a cutting board or other rolling surface with flour. Use your hands to pat a ball into a circle, then use a rolling pin to roll the dough out until it is about 1/8 thick. Add more flour if you need to as you roll the dough out.

Once you have rolled out the tortilla, place it on a preheated skillet. You don't need to add any oil or butter. Cook the tortilla for about 30 seconds. You will notice brown spots all over your tortilla. Flip it over and cook an additional 30 seconds. Don't over cook it as you want the tortilla to be nice and soft. Keep your tortillas warm by covering them in a towel on a plate or in a tortilla warmer.