Making Tortillas with Kids
Making tortillas is a kid-friendly, kid-pleasing activity
Homemade tortillas
I have been wanting to make homemade tortillas for years, but have never taken the time to make them before. I ran across a recipe on Pinterest and decided it was such an easy recipe that I needed to finally try it. I also had about a cup of organic flour from my CSA (Community Sponsored Agricultural farm) that I wanted to use up and thought this would be the perfect recipe to try it in. We are members with a nearby CSA and receive veggies weekly during the growing season from them. They also provide us with organic wheat flour at the beginning of the season.
My son loves to help out in the kitchen and he was the perfect helper. He loved mixing the dough and rolling it out with the rolling pin! We were talking about how tortillas are bread that is used in Mexico all the time and in many different dishes. We talked about using them as taco shells or dipping chips. We also talked about making a Mexican pizza with them and ours came out the perfect thickness for a Mexican pizza crust. My son made up a song that he kept singing while making these, "I live in Mexico and I like to make tortillas, I'm from Mexico and I like to eat tortillas". He and his friend really had a blast making these. Once they were cooked, I laid out some cheese and toppings for the kids to make their own tacos with for lunch. This was a fun, dish to make with the kids and we really had fun talking about everything you can make with Mexican tortillas!
Cook Time
Ingredients
- 3 cups flour
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- 1 Tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp salt, white granulated
- 1 cup water, warm
Instructions
- Place 3 cups flour (I used 2 cups unbleached flour and one cup organic whole wheat flour from my CSA) into a large bowl. I sift my flour before using it mainly because the unbleached and whole wheat flour make a very rustic dough. I wanted a finer dough for the tortillas.
- Add 1 tablespoon of sugar to the flour and blend in.
- Add 1 teaspoon of salt and blend it in, also.
- Measure 1/3 cup vegetable oil and add to the dry mixture.
- Run your water for a minute until it gets warm, then measure out 1 cup of the warm water. Add this to the flour mixture.
- Blend the ingredients well, folding in carefully at first so as not to make such a huge mess with the flour! Continue blending until the mixture forms a dough ball. My son had an absolute blast stirring the mixture into dough.
- Flour the countertop and split the ball into halves first, then quarters, etc. You should end up with enough dough to make about 10-12 balls, depending on the size. Mine were all different sizes because I let the kids roll out the dough on their own, after demonstrating of course!
- Flatten out each ball of dough with your floured hands or floured rolling pin and form into a tortilla. These should be pretty thin and you may have to re-flour the rolling pin to keep them from sticking. Lightly grease a flat wrought iron skillet with non-stick spray (or use a non-stick skillet, however, everything we own is pretty much wrought) and cook tortilla until brown spots form. This takes a couple minutes per side.
- Use the tortillas for any number of fun Mexican dishes; tacos, nachos, wraps, pizza or even casseroles. We made wraps for lunch, but ours were a little on the stiffer side. They cracked a little when they were folded. We rolled ours out a little thick and they ended up making great dippers for salsa. Ours were almost the same thickness as pita bread. If you roll them out thinner they will be more pliable and cook faster. Enjoy!
