How do you make homemade tortillas if the masa or corn meal is raw?

Question

In the rescent past, I learned how to make tortillas from pre-cooked corn meal. The already-cooked, already-ground corn meal is also known as, "instant corn meal".

I ground my own corn this time, but I do not know if anything special required because the masa is raw and uncooked

I tried the following:

1. mix the raw corn meal (masa cruda) with water.

2. form the dough into balls the size of golf-balls

3. squished the balls of dough flat in a tortilla press

4. fry the tortilla in a dry pan with no oil for less than 5 minutes.

It did not work. The tortillas from only coarsley ground corn and water are not flexible. The tortillas snap in half. No tacos 🌮 can be made. They are crumbly and brittle.

If I am using raw uncooked corn, do you reccomend that I fermet the corn on a bowl of water and yeast for a few hours?

Do you reccomend precooking the corn? I could spread the dry maiz crudo out on a cookie sheet and bake it in an oven for an hour or two at an extreemly low tempurature. Could make dough from pre cooked corn.

I only know how to make tortillas using factory-made instant pre-cooked flour.

Answer 1

In order for you to make tortillas, the corn needs to be nixtamalized, which you need to do when the corn is in its whole kernel form. Nixtamalization uses lime (cal), not yeast.

Since the corn will be soaked at the end of nixtamalization, when you grind it up it makes a wet masa dough than can be used directly.

Serious Eats documents the whole process.