I tried many brands, but I had to accept that ready-made tortillas are not to our liking. I would use them once and then a week or two later I discarded the rest. I lucked out when I found a wonderful tortilla recipe on the Prepared Homemaker. There is virtually no mess with it, you don’t even have to flour the board when rolling the dough. The secret is warm water, lard, resting the dough and a consistently hot skillet.
3 cups white flour
4 Tbsp lard
1 cup warm water
1 tsp salt
melted butter for brushing
• Place the flour in a large mixing bowl.
• Add the lard and combine with flour.
• Dissolve the salt in the warm water.
• Add water to the flour mixture.
• Combine dough.
• Place the dough on a board and kneed [no flour needed] until smooth.
• Divide dough into 12 parts and roll into balls.
• Cover and let dough rest for 45 minutes.
• Shape each ball into a flat disk and roll out to a 7-8" circles.
• The rolling takes a little skill. Resting the dough before rolling will make the dough elastic so there is no need to flour the board. Always roll the dough from the middle outward. Shift the dough and repeat rolling toward the opposite direction.
• Stack the rolled dough between wax paper.
• Heat an iron skillet or a non-stick fry pan to little more than medium high.
• Make sure the skillet is hot; otherwise, the tortilla will not puff up and will be tough.
• As the tortilla puffs up quickly turn it over.
• When light brown spots appear on both sides stack the tortilla on a plate.
• Serve immediately.
