A couple in Grand Rapids is cooking up homemade corn masa that’s garnered the attention of true tortilla lovers from all over the country. Madre Masa is one of the few Michigan businesses utilizing a process called nixtamalization in creating the dough for their corn tortillas.
“It's a really beautiful process. It's almost like a meditation,” Bek Ostosh, one half of the couple behind Madre Masa, said. “You have to be very present. You have to like, listen to the sound of the stones, make sure everything is passing through. You know, it invokes just a lot of the different senses, and smelling the masa, and cooking the masa.”
Ostosh’s partner, Renata Fernández Domínguez, grew up in Vera Cruz, Mexico. Store-bought American tortillas, Domínguez said, have nothing on the fresh corn dough her mother would buy from the community mill.
“Quite frankly, this for me was out of necessity. I was missing those flavors,” Domínguez said.
Now, the couple is sharing their nixtamalization knowledge with the community, and their corn tortillas with anyone willing to pick up their small-batch order from the couples’ home.
The nutritious difference
Nixtamalization is a pre-hispanic culinary method where dried corn kernels are cooked and soaked in an alkaline solution. The process transforms the corn, making it softer and increasing its nutritional value.
“A good nixtamalized tortilla – it's a superfood,” Domínguez said. “And so when you go to the store, check the ingredients. You shouldn't have more than three ingredients in your tortillas.”
Madre Masa’s corn comes from a West Michigan grower. Not to be confused with the sweet corn you might eat at a summer cookout, the dried heirloom field corn they buy is typically used in distilling bourbon and whiskey.
“A lot of the [tortillas] that are on the shelf that do have a lot of these preservatives and additives … Or they might just go through a very fast, you know, industrial process using a very low quality corn that might be GMO. You know, it just might not be as healthy, for the human body,” Ostosh said.
From kernel to tortilla
After soaking the kernels in an alkaline solution for 8-12 hours, they’re fed into a wet mill to be ground into dough.
Madre Masa’s stainless steel tabletop wet mill is about the size of a minifridge. An opening at the top of the machine feeds the kernels in between two volcanic stones. After the kernels are milled, the resulting product – the masa – comes out in fluffy flakes.
“This process of wet milling is really unique to Mexico,” Ostosh said. “And so a lot of people do think that when you're milling, you get a flour. … These volcanic stones, they get soaked in water. And then we put them on our mill, and then they mash, cut, aerate that. So the finished product is a dough. It’s not a flour at all.”
After the masa is thoroughly mixed, Domínguez forms the dough into small balls. She squishes each one in a tortilla press to create perfectly round tortillas that are about six inches wide.
“Then I try to take it out of the liner and put it on the hot griddle, the temperature is about 400 Fahrenheit. Really, really hot,” Domínguez said.
Each corn tortilla puffs up under the heat. After Domínguez flips the corn tortilla three times, the process is complete. The result is a stack of warm, pliable, aromatic corn tortillas whose flavor has left some consumers speechless, Domínguez said.
“They've said that we've ruined all their other tortilla experiences.”
For some, the tastes of Madre Masa’s tortillas have become a point of cultural reconnection.
“We also have a big Latino population here in Grand Rapids. And we've had folks who have tried nixtamal tortillas for the first time, and others who maybe haven't had one in decades or years,” Ostosh said. “And they'll try our tortillas, and it will either one, kind of transport them back to their grandmother's kitchen, and bring up a lot of those beautiful memories. Or two, It will just be this total moment of culture shock of, ‘Wow, I had no idea.’”
A communal process
Ostosh and Domínguez credit other cooks with educating them on the history and technique around nixtamalization.
“Instagram, in a way, has connected us to people who are knowledgeable about corn, and who have been doing this before us,” Domínguez said. “And we actually have gotten together in Minneapolis with a group, just to study different varieties of corn, and which corn is better for tortilla masa…”
The two have also traveled to Mexico, where they’ve been able to ask more specific questions about things like cooking times and stone sharpening.
“We always go to the tortillerias,” Ostoch said. “The folks who are not on Instagram, where we also show up, we do a lot of research around who's making nixtamal in these local communities, and who we can connect to.”
For Domínguez, making masa from scratch has allowed her to reconnect with the flavors and textures her mother was always so adamant about achieving.
“She's not with us anymore, but it really has helped me to feel her closer,” Domínguez said. “She loved to make tortillas. She refused to buy tortillas from industrial flour. And now I understand her much better. And we would say, like, ‘Oh, mom, don't be so special!’ But no she knew.”
