Harina de maiz, what's the difference?
Many, probably most, will be familiar with the type of corn tortilla found in Mexico. It's the same in Guatemala - a thin (British) pancake-like type of bread made from a simple dough of maize flour and water. In El Salvador you get pupusas, thicker and stuffed and oh so lovely, still made of the same maize flour dough. In Honduras, we gathered dried corn from the mission schoolhouse floor and walked it to a local tienda with a grinder. In went the corn with a little water and out came the masa which we patted out into tortillas.
As you go further south, harina de maiz changes. It's more like polenta, you can't make a glutinous dough with it. You get arepas, thick cakes of corn, instead of tortilla. You cannot make tortilla from the maize flour in Colombia and Venezuela. It's a different product yet still called harina de maiz.
I bought maize flour a few times in the UK, with a view to making tortilla and only once, in the specialist food section of Sainsbury's was it the real deal, and it cost a bomb. The rest of the stuff was like polenta and useless for my purpose.
Can anyone tell me what's going on? The flours have the same name but they are very different.
Thanking you..
8 Answers
There are differences between Maize Flour (corn Flour), Corn meal and Tortilla Flour:
1.- Corn flour: it is made by finely Grinding the (dry) grains of Corn to make a flour 2.- Corn meal is made by Grinding the (dry) Grains of corn into a bit bigger than the flour, this have almost no use in Mexico, I know they use it at the Pizza stores but I dont know other use
3.- Tortilla flour: it is made in several steps: 1.- The dry grains are put into Scalding water (as hot as you can get), with Lime (CALCIUM OXIDE) for at least 8 hours or until the grains are soft and almost cook, no need to continue heating this up. once they are done, the water is drained, and the grains are passed trough a grinder made of stone, the Aztecs, and still 1 or 2 Mexican generations used mostly a manual stone grinder called "Metate" made from volcanic stone.
This "masa" (Dough) have to be grinded till its smooth and no lumps are noticible, then you have the masa for Tortillas.
There are Few Flours brands that makes Tortilla flour, but the flavor changes a lot, still it makes a pretty decent tortilla.
The grind is finer (corn flour as opposed to corn meal), but there are other differences.The corn for flour is dehulled by soaking it in alkali before grinding the wet corn, making it into masa, allowing it to dry, and then making it into a powder. The corn for corn meal is also dehulled, but it is ground dry and then packaged.
I just went to the kitchen and checked our harina de maiz: it is much finer than American corn meal, but not as fine as wheat flour. I haven't tried to make tortillas out of it yet, so I can't help you there. It was interesting to note that they also had flour made from oats, rice, soy, wheat, cassava, plantains, and barley, if my memory serves me right.
I think by now the answer is fairly clear. I just wanted to point out that there is one name distinction that could make things easier, where available.
In a number of places you can go to a supermarket and find "masa harina",
which is treated with lime, and is what you'd use for your tortillas, hominy, and anything that's supposed to be flat or at least not-chunky.
Then you can also find "masarepa" or "masa de arepas",
which is not treated with lime, and is good for making arepas, bollos, pasteles, and anything chunky and chewy. You can make polenta with this stuff, although I prefer to get special polenta flour (or "instant polenta") for that purpose. I find that the texture of the special polenta flour is coarser.
This site seems to deal with your point. You have to be careful that it is the right type of flour.
For Tex-Mex corn tortillas, you want "masa harina", a product of the Quaker Oats company and the only brand name for it I've ever seen. Lime (the chemical, not the fruit) has been added. Something more, I can't remember what, is added to that for making tamales.
Is it possible--unbeknowst to you--people are mixing wheat flour in with fine corn meal?
It was my understanding that wheat was one of the few, if not the only, grain very good at producing the gluten necessary for making rising breads (whether by yeast or by baking powder). Rye is 2nd best, and it is quite lame compared to wheat flour. I really can't imagine corn flour being good at it at all.
But my mom and dad make fried corn bread and always mix corn meal with self-rising wheat flour (has the baking powder / soda / salt necessary mixed in). The more wheat flour and the finer the corn meal, the thicker and chewier the corn bread is.
I'm no expert on this but I think the masa that makes corn cakes and tamales is a pre-cooked meal where as tortillas are made from corn flour.
The flours have the same name but they are very different. Pretty much, basically, any dough that comes from corn will be called "masa" and any flattened mass will be called tortilla.
