I made tortillas for the first time the other day. I didn’t have any Masa Harina so I used Pan. They came out terrific, almost like a thin chalupa shell. Absolutely delicious. Then a couple days ago I tried to do it again, but this time I used Masa Harina. They all just fell apart. Nothing would hold up, and even the fried bits didn’t taste great. What is happen here? What’s my next step?
Sounds like your next step is to go back to Pan
Seriously. The solution is right in OP’s post
I want to understand why the recipes call for Masa Harina though, and how to make that work.
That’s valid. But, also keep in mind that “traditional” recipes came about out of necessity, and they stayed the same for centuries because agricultural advancements were slow. But, since the advent of refrigeration changed everything, advancements have come quickly.
For example, since indigenous people began using corn, they have had to nixtamalize (soak the grain in an alkaline solution) in order to bring out the nutritional characteristics of the corn. Through many generations of selective breeding, we’ve managed to create corn that doesn’t require nixtamalization to be nutritious and easy to work with in meals.
So, for modern corn variants nixtamalization isn’t needed, but if you use something like maize, you need to nixtamalize it. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia that seems to align with what you’re experiencing: While cornmeal made from untreated ground maize is unable by itself to form a dough on addition of water, nixtamalized cornmeal will form a dough, called masa.
I hope this helps, but just remember, if you like the result of the wrong way of making something, then it wasn’t wrong, just a happy little accident.
My guess is that you were using cornmeal that wasn’t nixtamalized