I thought I knew what went into making masa. Then I witnessed it
Café Bolita chef-owner Emmanuel Galvan first became obsessed with masa after a 2015 trip to Oaxaca. (Vanessa Labi/S.F. Chronicle)
Every Christmas, my family makes a pilgrimage to La Superior market's molino, or masa mill, to buy two sacks of masa harina, the dehydrated flour version of masa. Masa, the dough made of ground corn, is the heart of our holiday tamales. My mom reanimates the flour by adding lard or vegetable shortening (in recent years, batches of both, since we now have passionate vegetarians and meat lovers in the mix), salt and broth.
Bringing the masa back to life in this way is a shortcut. By contrast, soup-to-nuts nixtamalization - wherein dry maize, or corn, is soaked and transformed overnight into nixtamal and immediately ground into a rich, buttery foundation for tamales or as the girdle for taco ingredients - is much more time-consuming. But somehow, our abbreviated approach, what with all the mixing and whipping and the nail-biting float test, still feels like a lot of work. It's an effort that precedes even making and assembling the tamale filings, not to mention wrapping and tying them all up with corn husks. Trust, our semi-homemade version of masa is still delicious, but the extended nixtamalization process, the one that keeps the masa wet the entire time, produces a softer texture and more complex flavor.
No wonder that virtuosic nixtamalized corn tortillas - handmade, earthy, supple - can be hard to come by. Even in the Bay Area, where there's been something of a boom, they're essentially only at a Michelin-starred establishment, a handful of higher-end restaurants and select food trucks.
The physicality of lifting and straining 120-pound pots of nixtamal, one 12-pound basket at a time, "has completely changed my body," Café Bolita kitchen manager and molinerx Jasmine Embry said. (Vanessa Labi/S.F. Chronicle)
Perhaps no one is as obsessed with masa or making it more accessible than Emmanuel Galvan, who opened Café Bolita earlier this year in the former Standard Fare space after years of popups offering his masa-focused take on Mexican food. On a recent weekday morning, I ventured to Café Bolita to document Galvan's nixtamalization process for the Chronicle's Instagram; my colleague Cesar Hernandez reviewed the restaurant earlier this month.
By the time the sequence began that morning, three ludicrously capacious pots of maize had already been steeping overnight in a bath of water (for absorbing and softening) and calcium hydroxide (for unhusking) - but only after a meticulous regulation of water temperature. "Depending on the varietal," Galvan said, "some of them stay on heat for about an hour and a half, some for about an hour." Then they turn off the burners, cover the pots and let them metamorphose into soft, plump kernels ready to be ground.
Kitchen manager/molinerx Jasmine Embry sifted out a motley of indigo and ochre kernels, the Cónico azul variety, with a giant colander. The yellow bits showing through on each nub, Galvan said, was the pericarp, or outer skin, softening and sloughing off. This disrobing allows the actual starches inside the maize kernel to hydrate. "And now it's called nixtamal," he said. Galvan uses rare heirloom varietals, like Tolonki blanco, which makes a fluffy masa for tamales, and Cónico azul, which is better for tortillas.
Café Bolita uses a variety of heirloom landrace corn varietals, such as Cónico azul, a blue corn that works well in tortillas. (Cesar Hernandez/S.F. Chronicle)
Heap by 12-pound heap, Embry shook the nixtamal vigorously through the sieve, pointing out how even the sound of the kernel hitting the colander is different post-soak. The heaving and straining comes with, well, strain, leading Embry to call attention to another metamorphosis - their own physicality. "This has completely changed my body," they said.
The exertion of the operation was apparent, and conjured for me the labor behind my family's tamale-making, which, though nowhere near as involved or as scaled as Café Bolita's enterprise, never ceases to feel like "a whole thing" every Christmas.
After the giant, 120-pound pot of nixtamal was thoroughly filtered, it was carted over to the grinder, and Galvan brought out a pair of round volcanic stones striated with grooves emanating from its center. "All molinos that I know of at this point still use volcanic stones," he said. "The importance of the volcanic stone is that you have a very porous texture." The coarseness lets the kernels grip the stone, so they get more thoroughly broken down. Heat from the stones, meanwhile, makes the masa a bit more homogenous. "Out of it comes a dough that is fully ready masa."
Café Bolita opened in the former Standard Fare space in Berkeley after years as a popup. (Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle)
Galvan poured the nixtamal of the ecru-hued Tolonki varietal into the hopper then added a bit of water. As he activated the whirring machine, he and Embry tightened the stones to begin the crush. The masa began to fall like immaculate, fluffy snow into the container below. They checked its texture in real time to make adjustments as needed. "We're smelling, we're feeling, we're looking at it," Galvan said.
After that batch, Galvan and Embry fed in the deep blue Cónico azul. He balled up a scoop of the pale navy dough, pressed it into a perfectly round tortilla and cooked it on the plancha: one sear on each side, a third rotation for the final puff, then a sprinkle of salt. He handed it to me, demonstrating its pliability by rolling it into a taco. Still warm, I bit into the bare tortilla, which had a roasty, nutty flavor and a subtle sweetness.
Having my eyes opened to what goes into nixtamalization after consuming mass-produced tortillas, and even to the semi-homemade version of masa during Christmastime, was a quiet epiphany. After witnessing and tasting fresh masa firsthand, I'll be pursuing that enlightenment again and again.
