Certified Organic Corn Masa

Every weekday, I get up at 5am to come to the tortilla factory in Shelburne, with the hopes of making fresh corn masa. I use the word hope, because there are often many variables which can control the outcome of the masa. The fact that we use only 3 ingredients: Certified Organic Corn, Water, and Slaked Lime; it's hard to get a consistent product on a daily basis. There are no fillers or preservatives, so they tend to want to crack and break if not prepared correctly. So it really is a delicate process to make a perfect organic corn masa.

The process to make a perfect organic corn masa isn't overly complex, but again there's a lot of variables that can impact the masa. To begin, we need to have a good nixtamal to work with. This requires the correct amount of slaked lime, enough time for the corn to steep, enough (but not too much) heat for the correct amount of time, and proper handling of the corn while cooking to prevent hot or cold spots.

Making perfect organic corn masa isn't as simple as "cook it correctly", either. The grind stones really play a key role in the whole organic stone ground corn tortillas scene. Without the grind stones, which are actually volcanic stones, the whole process of making masa in any sort of real quantity would be all for naught. As you can see, the grind stones have a very particular pattern on them. This series of groves and channels allows the nixtamal to push through the two volcanic stones, and out the edges as fresh masa.

With all this fresh masa, we then process it into our organic corn tortillas, in either the popular 6 inch size, or the "Street Taco" variety at 4 inches. Remember though, just because we only make tortillas doesn't mean you can't take part in the fun. You can pick up our fresh premade masa for tamales, or anything else you can think to use it with. Since it's always fresh, it will never have the premade feel from a grocery store. And because it's only three ingredients, it will never disappoint.

Stop by the factory to pick up the freshest masa possible, or order our organic fresh masa from the website for mail delivery.