Masa at Home

I found a very interesting tutorial at Gourmet Sleuth on making masa at home. Two things about it caught my attention. First, that it calls for dent corn, also known as “field corn” here in the Midwest. Dent corn is so-named because the corn kernels have little dimples in the top. It’s extremely common in fields in this part of the country, but because it’s mostly used for animal feed, you tend not to see it in food stores. I wonder where the non-farmer might find some, other than perhaps in a pet supply store, since a lot of people feed it to birds in the winter. Hmm…

The next thing that intrigued me was the fact that the nixtamalization process seems to bleach the corn white. That or the starch under the pericarp is simply white, which probably makes more sense. Popped popcorn is white, after all. Hm. Interesting.