They Want Those Old-Time Tortillas

“Son muy pocas,” says Sandra Soto of Long Beach as she unloads six hefty packages of tortillas on the checkout counter of Amapola, a Mexican deli in south Los Angeles.

Today, Soto says, she is buying only a few. But sometimes she’ll take home 15 packages--540 tortillas, since each bag contains three dozen. This purchase is modest; 216 tortillas, a mere 13 1/2 pounds.

Like Soto, many people travel long distances to Amapola because its masa and tortillas are made from dried corn rather than from instant masa flour. Rich corn flavor wafts right through the plastic that wraps the tortillas stacked at the deli. They disappear in a flash, to be replaced by fresh stacks, three packages high. “The best masa. Always fresh. No preservatives,” says a sign outside the store.

In Mexico, tortillas have been a favored food for centuries. The Aztec ruler Montezuma II ate them at banquets, and the Spanish explorer Hernan Cortes ordered them served at an elaborate celebration following his conquest of the Aztec empire. But neither Montezuma nor Cortes would recognize today’s mass-market tortillas, which are produced from masa flour, a product that is practical for volume production.

Traditional corn tortillas are made from dried corn that has been boiled with lime, peeled and then ground into masa. Fragrant, supple in texture and rich in flavor, they have become an artisanal product, like specialty breads. Once they were the only tortillas you could buy. Today, the tortillerias that make them are likely to be in Latino areas where the demand for authenticity prevails.

One is in Cypress Park. La Morenita Tortilleria y Panaderia looks like any other neighborhood Mexican market, but in back is a factory where masa is made from dried corn in the traditional way.

First the whole kernels of dried corn are converted into nixtamal, which resembles hominy. The corn drops through a pipe into tanks where it is cooked with water and lime for two hours, then it stands for eight more. Next, the nixtamal is washed to remove the loosened hulls and fed into a grinder with enough water to turn it into masa.

A machine shapes the masa into tortillas, which pass through three ovens, each with a different heat level to ensure that both inside and outside are cooked. Finally, the tortillas drop onto a conveyor belt to cool before they are packed.

Producing tortillas in the traditional way “takes a little more work,” says market owner Cesar Pena, “but the clientele we have expects to get a natural corn tortilla, and we’re able to keep the tradition going.”

Tortillerias that use instant masa flour benefit from a streamlined operation. There’s no dried corn to boil, soak, peel and grind; that means no grinding machines to purchase, no food-grade lime to buy and no corn hulls to get rid of.

At El Toro Carniceria in Santa Ana, just collecting the hulls and taking them to a disposal center costs about $400 a week. Here, the corn is stone-ground, and the masa is lightly kneaded by hand before it is machine-shaped into tortillas. Although tortilla production can be fully automated, El Toro retains some hands-on participation.

Its tortilleria processes 64,000 pounds of dried corn into masa every week--even more during the Christmas season, when masa is in demand for tamales. The tortillas, which are sold only on the premises, are made without preservatives because they move so quickly. “The people really like that a lot,” says Juan C. Bonilla, one of three brothers who own this market with its adjacent tortilleria and deli.

El Toro’s tortillas are meaty. Each package of three dozen weighs 3 pounds, compared to 2 1/4 pounds for Amapola’s tortillas and 1 7/8 pounds for three dozen Buena Comida tortillas, a private-label brand at Ralphs markets. “They won’t break when you are making enchiladas,” Bonilla says.

Sales of corn tortillas in 1998 reached $1.2 billion, according to the Tortilla Assn. of America, a Dallas-based trade association. Of those, 75% were produced with corn masa flour, says Irwin Steinberg, executive director.

“But in terms of producers, this number is a bit misleading, because some very large producers use corn flour, which skews the sales dollars,” he says. “The number of companies who make cooked corn [fresh masa] tortillas is actually twice that of those who use corn masa flour.”

La Conquistadora, a neighborhood tortilleria near South Pasadena, made masa only with dried corn until eight or nine years ago, says Petra Anguiano of this family-owned business. Now, she says, tortillas made from instant masa outsell those made from the corn delivered to the silo just outside.

Customers like the softness of the thin instant masa tortillas, Anguiano says, though tortillas made the traditional way are sturdier and more fragrant. In this Latino neighborhood, La Conquistadora also sells masa for women to make their own tortillas.

In Sylmar, the Graciana Tortilla and Tamale Factory makes 50,000 tortillas a day from the 40,000 pounds of dried corn delivered each week. Some of its tortillas combine instant masa flour with ground corn masa. The composition is tailored to the requests of customers, 90% of which are restaurants.

Using instant masa makes for an easier and overall less expensive production process, important in what Graciana sales manager Mauricio de la Mora describes as a competitive market. Yet owners of traditional Mexican restaurants are more likely to want tortillas made only from dried corn. These are “more thick, and the color is a strong yellow,” De la Mora says. “When you use a regular corn tortilla for your table, you can taste the corn.”

Graciana’s tortillas come in four sizes, ranging from 4 inches to the standard 6 inches in diameter. The company also produces chips, using tortillas that blend the two types of masa for ordinary chips and thin instant masa tortillas for colored chips. “When you eat a chip, you get more the taste of the manteca (lard) or corn oil [in which the chip was fried], not the corn,” De la Mora says.

Tortillerias that use instant masa flour obtain it from several sources. The industry giant is Azteca Milling L.P., part of Gruma Corp., the U.S. subsidiary of Gruma S.A. de C.V., a Mexican company based in Monterrey in northern Mexico. Azteca, headquartered in Irving, Texas, produces Maseca, the market leader in both the United States and Mexico. No. 2 in both countries is Minsa, headquartered in Mexico City with an American branch in Muleshoe, Texas. Azteca and Minsa target retail consumers as well as manufacturers.

To home cooks, instant masa is Masa Harina, the brand name introduced by the Quaker Oats Co. in 1950. This product is sold only to retail consumers and not to the food industry. Masa Harina is distributed nationally and sells most briskly in the southwestern and western states, says company spokeswoman Allison Harmon.

The flour is manufactured from white corn that is treated with lime water and then ground. The flour is enriched with iron and such B vitamins as niacin, riboflavin, thiamine and folic acid and contains no sodium, says Harmon.

In Mexico, the whole process started with the Aztec and Maya gods who, according to legend, gave man corn. “In the tortilla, corn became exalted and reached its greatest gastronomic expression,” writes Sebastian Verti in his book on Mexican gastronomy, “Esplendor y Grandeza de la Cocina Mexicana” (Editorial Diana, Mexico, 1994).

In rural areas, tortilla making was woman’s work, a daily ritual that involved grinding the corn on a stone metate, then patting the tortillas by hand and cooking them on a comal (griddle) so that fresh hot tortillas could be served at each meal. A calendar distributed by La Morenita shows a young woman happily engaged in this task.

In reality, it was drudgery, a “practica esclavista” (slave work), writes Jose N. Iturriaga in his book on traditional Mexican foods, “La Cultura del Antojito” (Editorial Diana, 1993).

Although connoisseurs idealize tortillas as they were once prepared, the women who labored so intensely would surely have applauded both the introduction of instant masa flour and the industrial production of the tortilla, whether made of fresh or instant masa.

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Some Sources of Real Corn Tortillas

* Amapola, a Mexican Deli, 7223 Compton Ave., Los Angeles. (323) 587-7118.

* El Toro Carniceria, 1340 W. 1st Street, Santa Ana. (714) 836-13393.

* Graciana Tortilla & Tamale Factory, 12239 Foothill Blvd., Sylmar. (818) 897-2079. Tortillas made from ground corn must be ordered a day in advance.

* La Conquistadora Tortilleria, 5401 N. Huntington Drive, Los Angeles. (323) 342-0202.

* La Morenita Tortilleria y Panaderia, 1157 Cypress Ave., Los Angeles (Cypress Park). (323) 222-7953.