Food Origins #2: Personas de Maíz
I've been thinking about maíz for a few months now. It led to people and places, like Oaxaca, as I went after the pockets of wisdom hidden in this emblematic food.
Origins is a collection of short stories about food traditions in the Americas. I’m not a historian, anthropologist, or scientist - I'm a searcher, and I write the stories I find along the way in the conversations I have, in walks around the city, and in my interactions with the world.
Time as an ingredient
If you’ve never heard the word maíz, let me introduce you: it's the plant that many know as corn. In its mature form, the maize cob is filled with dry grains whose colors can vary anywhere from light golden to dark blue. Maíz is considered one of the most relevant cultural elements in Mexican culture, used to make a beautiful range of foods, such as tortillas and tamales, or beverages, like tepache. I learned along the way that maíz is more than just food: it embodies history, tradition, and customs.
Even though maíz can be found pretty much anywhere nowadays, it originated in one part of the world: Mesoamerica, the region known today as Mexico, more than 8,000 years ago. Its origin was traced to a wild plant called teosinte, a shaggy grass with tiny cobs and tiny grains, this plant was practically inedible.
Back then, Mesoamerican societies were already used to managing their environments and began to modify teosinte through selective breeding until it became something closer to what we know today as maíz: with more and larger grains that can be used as a viable food. As simple as this may sound, the transformation of the wild teosinte to maíz really took hundreds of generations to happen.
I’m curious about how things come to be because beginnings always reveal an underlying need or desire. If maize was created, what drew attention to it in the first place? One theory says the first culinary use of maize was for popcorn. There is something ludic about how the hard grains explode into white, puffy, aromatic popcorns. I imagine how those left everyone in awe.
While the origin of maize still presents many unknowns, it unquestionably gained an important place in culinary customs at that time. As it started to take form, expanding north and south of Mesoamerica, other levels of diversification came through: flavors, colors, and shapes. Each region with its own terroir, and each variety, a cultural expression across the territory.
A Warm Day in Oaxaca
A few weeks ago in Oaxaca, I stood in a kitchen watching Chef Arianna Rivera cook tortillas in the comal. The smell of something earthy, resembling anis inundated the kitchen and my mind. I watched Ariana as she flipped flat circles of masa with such rapid movements, mastering a task that took generations and generations to refine. “You flip it twice for tostadas, and three times for tortillas”, she said.
To turn dry grains of maize into a soft masa, there has to be some sort of transformation. This technique, called nixtamalization, is the process of cooking grains of maíz to the point they’re appropriately soft to be consumed by humans. It is an indispensable step for turning maize into nutritious food, and it’s one of the reasons why maize gained a primary role in Mexican food customs.
Nixtamalization is a long and beautiful process. The maize grains have to be cooked and soaked for several hours in an alkaline solution until they are soft, and the skins have broken apart. Then comes the grinding process: the humidity retained into those grains result in a wet dough called masa — a white canvas for so many culinary preparations, as explained in “Unlocking Nixtamal”, by Andrea Aliseda.
It was a very warm day in Oaxaca, around noon, when we walked over to the neighborhood molino - a place where you’ll usually find a large grinding machine that gets the job done. We waited in line with people carrying baskets of all sorts of contents: nixtamalized maize, wheat, cacao, ingredients for mole. The molinero worked through each basket as the room was taken over by the scents and the mechanic noises coming from the machine.
Right there, behind the counter, I caught myself at the center of a short, but emblematic transaction: to turn nixtamalized maize into infinite possibilities.
A Micro Molino in Oakland, CA.
Bolita Masa is a micro molino and tortilleria based in Oakland, that makes tortillas with maíz criollo from Mexico. They are made with the traditional nixtamalization and ground using a volcanic stone mill. All of this happening in the Bay Area: you’ll find the fresh tortillas, (and salsas, and tlacoyos) in Oakland, and in the Mission district farmer’s market. I was drawn to the story of Emmanuel’s passion for tortillas, which popped into my eyes for the variety of colors — yellow, blue, orange.
“What’s your story with masa?” I looked Emmanuel in the eyes and he knew I wanted to know it all. Emmanuel’s first memories in the kitchen were as a kid, making tortillas with his mother. In the 50s a product called Maseca was launched, and it was everything you could ask for from a convenience point of view: dry maize flour that only requires adding water to the mixture to make homemade tortillas. Emmanuel and his mom used to sit by the kitchen, rolling little balls - bolitas - of hydrated maseca that would be pressed into tortillas.
Emmanuel is a first-generation American who grew up in the Napa Valley region, the son of a Mexican couple that moved to California in their early 20s. Growing up with mixed cultures is like being part of two worlds. It is magical but it can also embody a sense of isolation (“are you this, or that”?). So that kid, who grew up surrounded by the food and wine scene of Napa Valley, knew he wanted to do something of his own, but most importantly something meaningful.
When you find yourself walking the streets of Oaxaca’s centro, there’s an inevitable resemblance to visiting a museum and learning how our ancestors lived. Local artists exhibit their colorful creations — rugs, embroidery, clay—, cooks showcase their culinary gifts in markets, making you fall in love with flavors and scents. In this setting, Emmanuel drew a strong connection between his own identity and masa, which took him back to those childhood afternoons, making tortillas with his mom. Emmanuel traveled several times to Mexico, and those trips became immersions into this culture that was so familiar, yet, distant. Masa became his subject matter, as the ladies at the mercados slowly revealed their best-kept secrets, helping to build a library of knowledge.
Bolita Masa was born in 2020, with the pandemic as a backdrop, and evolved from a casual delivery business to a staple at farmer’s markets. On production days, Emmanuel’s shift starts at 5am, allowing enough time for the long nixtamalization, grinding, and tortilla pressing. But like an art studio, the colorful masas act as a white canvas for culinary creations.
Emmanuel’s craft is an ode to all the ancestral knowledge that has carried over through thousands of years, mixed with his very own history. When life presents you with the opportunity of having Bolita Masa tortillas, you’re eating much more than that. You’re having the story of each family that produced the maíz; the ancestral tradition of nixtamalization; the devotion of the hands that pressed those tortillas in Oakland.
During these 4 weeks in Oaxaca, besides stories about maíz, I also listened to a lot of… cumbia.
A warm thanks to the people that helped throughout my research: Emmanuel Galvan (Bolita Masa), Rafael Miel (Fundación Tortilla), Arianna Rivera, and mi hermana Dolores;
The great books and articles that helped me deepen my understanding about maize: “The Omnivore’s Dilemma:” by Michael Pollan; “1491” by Charles C. Mann; and “Unlocking Nixtamal” by Andrea Aliseda.
And thank you to my editor, Maria Cruz.
Origins is a collection of short stories about food traditions in the Americas. I’m not a historian, anthropologist, or scientist - I'm a searcher, and I write the stories I find along the way in the conversations I have, in walks around the city, and in my interactions with the world.
Feedback and ideas are more than welcome at zairaasis@gmail.com.