What a great idea. I ususally make mine by hand which can be a pain. This would make the process so much easier. Going to put it on hubby's "Honey Do" list to build one of these.

We use one of these in our portable wood fired pizza business. It works great.  Check us out at www.theromastone.com.

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So give a light coating of cooking spray or oil on the surfaces of the plastic sheet where you place the dough ball before pressing out each ball of dough.  Try rotating the plastic sheet and dough shell 90 or 180 degrees and repressing to make the thickness uniform.  Experiment and see what works best.

Peel the top sheet of plastic off and flip the finished shell upside down onto sheet of Saran plastic wrap.  Then with a little practice peel the other sheet from the shell.  Let the completed shells dry until you can move them.

I hope these suggestions will help. - Randy

I modified my construction by lengthening the base piece by 3” and gluing a 1” x 3” strip of wood on top of the hinge end.  The hinges can be mounted horizontally on top instead of vertically on the side.  The shell thickness can be increased by adding washers under the side of the hinges that screw to the base of the press

My first tortilla shell was thicker than what I wanted, plus it took a lot of pressure.  My wife suggested spraying Pam on the plastic sheet before pressing out the next ball of dough.  That did the trick!  I was able to press the dough to a 1 mm thick shell with a large diameter.  The oil made it easier to flatten out the dough.

Does the comment section work?

I'm looking into presses now; although, I do have some 3" think blocks that I plan to use as in my next attempt at a press.  But, I'm starting to understand that the super thin thickness may be the hardest to achieve - seems to take a crazy amount of pressure to get it to 2-3 mm.

Incidentally, I'm having trouble getting the tortillas (that I roll out by hand, still) cooked in the middle without burning on the outside.  I use the exact same ingredients as you, so i was wondering if you could comment.

Unfortunately, here in New Zealand, finding good homemade tortilla is impossible.  I will have to figure out how to make them, or give up wantign them.

The press is only 11 long, so you wouldn't be able to roll it out that big. But I don't think it could handle that much dough anyhow. I think to get that much pressure manually you have to put it on the floor and stand on it. You'd have to use a harder wood; all that pressure would break the pine/glue joint, I bet.

I've made Sonoran style tortillas four times now, but I don't have a cooking surface to make them terribly large. I use two cups of bread floor, three tablespoons veg. shortning/lard, 3/4 water, and salt. I use a rolling pin/wax paper to press them.

We have a local restaurant owned by a Sonoran family that does them on Fridays and Saturdays, so usually I just buy fresh ones when they're available.

You may be able to find a used pizza dough press for 40 or 50 bucks if you're committed. They're big though, but you could also do pizza, elephant ears, cookies, etc.

Cheers 

Hello, I'm a big fan of large flour Sonoran style tortillas.  Using this press, can you press

them 16-18"?  It seems to take a lot of force to press the dough to that size (and thinness.)

Wondering if you can generate that much force.  Also, regardless of diameter, how thin can

you get the dough?