How to make authentic homemade tortillas

Ingredients: 7 cups of flour, 3 1/2 cups of water, 1 cup of lard, and 4 teaspoons of salt.

Put the flour, salt, and lard in a large mixing bowl.

Mix and squeeze the lard, flour, and salt. Squeeze?? Yeah, it's the best way to break up the lard...

This is what you want the dough to look like before you add the water. Add the water slowly, mix first and then knead. You may need to use less or add more water, just depends on your dough.

Kneading....

More kneading... The dough is ready when it doesn't stick to your hands.

Now the fun part! You want to get a grapefruit size piece of dough, knead it a little in your hands, and make small (golf ball size) dough balls.

Here's our technique. Hold the dough in one hand and squeeze out a golf ball size ball. It's harder than it looks. Practice makes perfect!

Just add the dough back into the bowl until all of your dough is formed into balls.

Now, put a little lard onto your hands to coat the dough balls. This helps the dough not dry. If you are using a rolling pin ignore steps 11-16. Roll out the thinnest tortillas you can.

This is the tortilladora electrica. It's an electric tortilla smasher that not only smashes the dough, it also cooks it a little.

Put a dough ball in the middle...

Smash the dough, leaving it for a minute to let the dough cool a little.

Lay the tortillas on wax paper to let them cool.

Here's what they look like when they're cool.

Stack them up to prepare for cooking!

Here's the plaquita. Make sure it's nice and hot!

Put a tortilla on the plaquita. When it starts to bubble on the top, turn it over.

You don't want it to look like this.

When it gets like this it's ready!

Another example...

Lay them on a cookie sheet so they can cool.

Yummy!

When they're all done, lay them all out to make sure they're cool. If not they will stick together.

Stack them up and put them in a ziplock and store them in the fridge.

Remember, it's always important to eat a few tortillas with butter while you're cooking, just to make sure they taste good :) I hope you enjoyed this "how to," and the tortillas!